Humansplaining
by TheLoud
Summary: Tonks knows all about werewolves, thanks to her Auror training, so now she can humansplain lycanthropy to this intriguing man she just met named Remus Lupin. That'll impress him, right? These characters are the property of J.K. Rowling, of course. This is the final installment of my planned canon-compliant Employee of the Month series.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1, Ministry Malcontent

Spring, 1993

A toad-shaped witch in a pink suit waddled to the front of the meeting room and smiled primly at the assembled Aurors. Then she flicked her short, pale wand at the wall. Glowing golden letters appeared, with the Ministry of Magic logo, the name Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, and the title of today's presentation, The Protection Against Werewolves Act. She pointed her wand at her throat and said " _Sonorous_ ," making her voice louder, but unfortunately no less squeaky. "I am honored," she began, "to be in the presence of so many brave heroes, defenders of the wizarding community, indeed, defenders of all of humankind."

"Excuse me," interrupted the gruff voice of Mad-Eye Moody. "You're in the wrong department. This is the Auror Department, but your slide says Werewolves. You want the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures instead." He wrenched his mutilated face into a smile and looked proudly around the room at his fellow Aurors. "Shortest meeting ever, eh? Now let's get back to work. I'll show you out, Madam Undersecretary. Don't feel bad, it's easy to get lost in this building."

"Hem, hem," Umbridge cleared her throat. "I am in the right department, mister...?"

"Moody," said Mad-Eye. "Alastor Moody."

"You!" she squeaked sternly. "Your reputation precedes you."

Mad-Eye smiled even more broadly.

"Thank you for your concern," she continued, "but I am I the right department. If you pay attention to my presentation, everything should become clear. If you are still confused afterwards, there will be a question and answer period. If you are still confused after that, I'm afraid I can't help you, and I recommend you look into retirement, which I have heard you are overdue for. Now then." She continued her presentation. "Thanks to you, our safety is assured, in our homes, in our businesses, and of course in our schools, protecting the most precious, cherished members of our community, our children." As she spoke, rather slowly, she kept flicking her wand at the wall, illustrating each phrase with a stock photo of a grand home, Diagon Alley on a bustling shopping day, and a classroom full of children, seated in a neat grid of desks, all smiling, all with right hand raised. "You are ever vigilant against those who would do us harm, be they dark wizards," (this was illustrated by that famous photo of Sirius Black, wand clenched in his fist, laughing maniacally in a muggle street strewn with rubble and corpses) "or—"

"Anyone else want donuts?" interrupted Mad-Eye Moody.

Tonks suppressed her laughter, then changed her mind and let it out. "Yeah, I could go for a jelly-filled."

"Hem, hem," Umbridge cleared her throat daintily, glaring at Mad-Eye, and sparing a smaller glare for Tonks. "I'm sure you didn't mean to interrupt my presentation. The Ministry of Magic's new law, the Protection Against Werewolves Act, is of utmost importance. I would think that Aurors would be interested in learning the details, considering that you are the ones who will be enforcing it."

"So give us the details already," grumbled Mad-Eye. "I'm old. I'm not going to waste the little time I have left sitting through boring presentations."

"I'm sure you didn't intend to speak disrespectfully to a Ministry official," smiled Umbridge.

"You're sure?" asked Mad-Eye. "Not very observant, are you? I think a large variety pack of donuts will be enough to keep us awake through this Ministry nonsense, right? My treat." He got some nods of assent from the assembled Aurors, although many pointedly ignored his gaze. He then addressed Tonks directly, although loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Fill me in if she ever says anything of importance. I'll be right back." Tonks nodded, smiling, and Mad-Eye left, his wooden leg clomping loudly on the floor. He must have taken his usual silencing spells off it.

Tonks got parchment, quill and ink ready, and looked at Umbridge expectantly. She wished that Mad-Eye had sent her out for donuts rather than leave her here to endure this presentation, but she would do as her mentor had ordered and earn her donut.

The slide on the wall behind Umbridge looked like an ad for dark magic. Tall and elegant, Sirius Black looked aristocratically handsome, even under the splatters of blood. His long black hair rippled in the breeze as he laughed. He'd been twenty-one when that picture was taken. Tonks wasn't quite twenty-one yet, but she'd figured the important stuff out already. It's so simple! she futilely told the young wizard in the photo. Just choose good, not evil. How could you have screwed up something so obvious?

Umbridge looked at her notes. "Hem, hem. You are ever-vigilant against against those who would do us harm, be they dark wizards, or half-breeds," (She finally replaced the photo of Sirius with a drawing of a creature that was goblin-like, but clutching a wand, and wearing wizard-style robes and an evil grin), "or various inhuman beings masquerading as true humans for nefarious purposes." (This was illustrated by an artistic interpretation of a transforming werewolf, as real photos of this, Tonks supposed, must be rare.) Umbridge fumbled with her wand until it emitted a narrow beam of light. This light briefly highlighted the slobber dripping from the fangs of the werewolf in the drawing, then the drawing was replaced by a new slide full of text. "My Protection Against Werewolves Act greatly expands your powers to defend us against one of these dark forces."

Expands our powers, mulled Tonks. She made a note of that to discuss with Mad-Eye later, writing, "expands our powers=expands our workload=/=expands our pay."

Umbridge smiled to see her taking notes. Tonks realized with horror that her hair, in its usual short pink spikes, was almost the same color as Umbridge's suit. She quickly fixed that, turning her hair green from roots to ends. Teachers hadn't liked her doing that in school, saying it distracted her classmates.

"Hem, hem," said Umbridge, her smile at Tonks turning into a glare.

Tonks turned her hair purple with yellow stripes.

Umbridge turned away from her and continued her speech. "Werewolves have long been under the jurisdiction of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. However, that department has proven inadequate to the task. I believe that Aurors will do a much better job at managing beings of near-human intelligence, particularly those that are in our midst, impersonating humans. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures lacks the power to investigate beings that have infiltrated human society, and appear to be human to the casual observer. Aurors, already in the business of investigating humans, will do a much better job of finding out which of their suspects are not human at all. Thanks to The Protection Against Werewolves Act, no longer must you assume that suspects are human simply because they look human. Now you may actively test the species of any suspect with scanning spells, and should they fail the test, transfer the case to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Also—"

Tonks looked around the room, but it seemed that no one else was going to say it, so she had to. "We can already do that," she said.

"Hem, hem," said the pink-clad toad.

At this point, Mad-Eye came back and clomped all around the room, offering the donuts to everyone. Tonks selected one oozing red jelly. "Thanks. Aren't you going to have one?"

"No, I'm not hungry," said Mad-Eye. He offered the box to Umbridge. "They should be safe, I already scanned them for poisons," he said, but she declined. Mad-Eye took his seat besides Tonks again.

"All you missed is that we now can scan suspects to check that they're human, just like we could already do," whispered Tonks.

Mad-Eye snorted through his mutilated nose, which Tonks recognized as the sound of his laughter. "Oh, one of those laws," he scoffed. "The Ministry is trying to make a show of doing something without actually doing anything."

"Madam Undersecretary," said another voice. Tonks looked askance at Paul, her handsome young classmate. "I for one am glad that the Ministry is so supportive of our work, and I'd like to hear the rest of the presentation." There were some nods and murmurs of agreement at this.

Ass-kisser. Tonks took a ferocious bite of her donut, which squirted red jelly onto her uniform. " _Scourgify_ ," she said quietly, with a twitch of her wand, but it didn't do much good. She just wanted this stupid presentation to be over.

The red goo suddenly disappeared, and she looked thankfully at Mad-Eye, who nodded to acknowledge her thanks, and put his wand away.

Umbridge smiled at Paul. "Thank you very much, mister..."

"Proudfoot, Paul Proudfoot," he said. "I've nearly completed my Auror training, and I'm quite looking forward to enforcing this new law."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Proudfoot." She turned to Tonks, smiling. "And what is your name, dear?"

"Tonks," said Tonks.

"I meant your full name, dear."

Tonks refused to let her feelings reach her face. "Nymphadora Tonks," she said.

"What a charming name!" simpered Umbridge. "I don't recognize your surname, though. Muggle-born, are you? You seem unfamiliar with our ways."

"My father's muggle-born," explained Tonks. Should she pull out the big guns? Yeah, why not. "My mother was born to the noble and most ancient house of Black." With difficultly, she refrained from accompanying the phrase with her usual eye roll. There was no need to add details like her mother's name being burned off the family tapestry for the sin of marrying a muggle-born wizard. She turned her hair black to emphasise her point and took another bite of her donut.

It felt like cheating, but the effect on Umbridge was very gratifying. Tonks had knocked that condescending smirk right off her face. Umbridge didn't seem to notice that the narrow beam of light from her wand, illuminating the word Protection on the slide, was glowing brighter and brighter. After the shock had worn off, Umbridge fixed her face in a fawning expression that looked even worse on her than it had looked on Paul. "A very powerful magical family," she said admiringly. "And heroes to our country."

Was she referring to the ones in prison? She'd just shown a slide of one of Tonks's infamous, murderous cousins. Tonks gave Umbridge a blank stare.

"I am honored to meet you," simpered Umbridge. "And now, if I may, I will continue my presentation?"

She seemed to be asking permission, so Tonks granted it with a nod. Too late, she wondered if she should have withheld her permission.

Umbridge turned to look at her slide on the wall. The word Protection was on fire, or at least the wall supporting it was. She dropped her wand, and the narrow, painfully bright beam of light it had been emitting turned off. Umbridge's panicked shrieks, pitched even higher than her usual speaking voice, were unfortunately amplified just as her speech had been.

Tonks drew her wand, surprised that Mad-Eye hadn't done so already, but he used his quick reflexes only to restrain her wand hand. His hand on hers was scarred, rough and massive, bristling with grey hairs. "Now this is what I call an interesting presentation," he whispered.

Kingsley hadn't said anything up to this point, nor had he accepted a donut from Mad-Eye. Now he got up, neatly stepped around the panicking pink toad, extinguished the fire, repaired the wall, picked up Umbridge's wand, handed it to her, and sat down again. He put his wand away and took up his quill again, poised over his parchment to take notes.

Umbridge, after recovering her composure, breathlessly said "Thank you, mister?"

"Shacklebolt, Madam Undersecretary. Kingsley Shacklebolt. There's no need to thank me, I'm just doing my job," he said in his soothingly deep voice.

"Shacklebolt... Pureblood?"

Kingsley nodded.

Umbridge beamed. "I could tell. You're a credit to the force, Shacklebolt."

"I'm simply doing my duty to my country, Madam Undersecretary."

"I'm a pureblood too," interrupted Mad-Eye.

"As I was saying," squeaked Umbridge furiously, pointing her wand at the slide, "The Protection Against Werewolves Act greatly expands your powers to protect us. It is true," Umbridge admitted graciously to Tonks, "that Aurors already had the authority to check the species of individuals suspected of other crimes. My new act expands this power, so you may now check the species of anyone at all, regardless of whether they are suspected of a crime besides human-impersonation or not. No warrant will be required."

Kingsley jotted down a note.

"The public will also help you do your jobs as you help them stay safe," Umbridge continued. "Today's edition of the Daily Prophet features an article requesting that the safety-minded public submit anonymous tips to the Auror Department, whenever they have the slightest suspicion that one of their acquaintance may be merely pretending to be human. The public is asked to be on the alert for anyone exhibiting unusual behavior around the full moon."

Tonks was not a seer, but it didn't take a seer to see how this would go. Anyone with a grudge would soon be reporting their ex-boyfriend, lady who insulted their cooking, and guy who sold them that used broom. They would all suddenly be werewolves, and the Aurors would have to follow each and every one of these leads, as if they didn't have real criminals to track down.

"No longer will you have to wait until these lurking false humans ambush true humans before you act," continued Umbridge. "You may now preemptively remove them from society, even before they strike! Just imagine how much safer we'll be! Consider, for example, the law that only humans may use wands. Other creatures have their own powers. If werewolves were allowed wands as well, you can imagine the terrible power imbalance that would result. Removing wands from the hands of inhuman beings must be among our highest priorities."

Kingsley took more notes.

"In addition to correcting old mistakes," continued Umbridge, "The Protection Against Werewolves Act also features new advances in safety!"

Bloody Helga, it gets worse.

"Humans who endanger the rest of society by knowingly sheltering, employing, or otherwise supporting werewolves where they may pose a danger to others will now be charged with a crime. Of course, the Ministry is not heartless. It will still be legal to employ or house registered werewolves, provided that the public is notified. Any business owner who wishes to employ a registered werewolf may do so, and it is also still legal to provide housing to registered werewolves. The employer or landlord must simply warn potential customers and neighbors of the hazard by posting a large sign at the place of business or residence. Also, the employer or landlord must deliver written notification of the danger to all humans who reside or work within a one-mile radius of the werewolf. These humans may then formally grant permission for the registered werewolf to live or work near them by filling out form MOMDOWS1993f27b at the Werewolf Services office."

Umbridge flicked a text-dense slide onto the wall. "The Protection Against Werewolves act also features many improvements to the Werewolf Registry. Registration number tattoos are now larger and more prominently placed, curfews are earlier, etc, but these specifics are of more concern to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, so I won't bore you with details." She flicked the text-heavy slide away, thank goodness.

The next slide was about feral werewolves. It was decorated with the clip art of the slavering werewolf again. "The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures has traditionally cooperated with the Auror Department for help with programs aimed at reducing the feral werewolf population. These programs will now be run by the Auror Department, and funding for these programs has now increased as you can see in this table. Feral werewolves which are captured alive, and not deemed dangerous enough to require euthanasia, will still be supplied to the Werewolf Research Institute, which remains under the direction of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

Umbridge put up a slide composed of three images, the clip art werewolf on the left, slavering towards the smiling stock photo children on the right. Separating the two was a cartoonish image of an Auror, wand pointed at the werewolf. "I conclusion, you, the brave men and women of the Auror Department, now have expanded powers to protect us from the inhuman monsters that have infiltrated our society. I look forward to a new era of increased safety and prosperity for all true humans. Any questions?"

Kingsley raised his hand and was called on immediately. His deep, quiet voice said, "Human-impersonation has been on the books as a crime for centuries, but it hasn't been enforced in living memory. Does the Ministry expect us to enforce this now?"

Tonks underlined "expands our workload" on her parchment. Mad-Eye snorted.

Umbridge nodded sympathetically. "Yes, and I want all of you to know that the Ministry does not blame anyone here for this failure to enforce the law. Previous administrations have placed many obstacles in your way, requiring such unnecessary paperwork as probable cause, evidence, and warrants before you are allowed to do your jobs. My new law removes these obstacles, allowing you to cast detection spells on anyone you encounter, in public, in places of business, or in their homes, on any suspicion whatsoever!" She smiled proudly as some in the audience, led by Paul, burst into applause at this announcement.

Kinglsey nodded to acknowledge this answer. Then he raised his hand again and was called on again. "The Werewolf Registry is currently virtually unused," he said. "Werewolves have no motivation to register, and the new registry requirements seem even less likely to attract registrants. Why would any werewolves register?"

Umbridge went back a few slides to the one about increased funding for feral werewolf population reduction. "Unregistered, also called feral, werewolves, will no longer be permitted to roam free."

"The word feral used to refer to those werewolves who relinquish their claim to humanity, allowing their wolfish side to rule them all the time, not just during the full moon," said Kingsley. "They band together in packs and live as wolves, not humans. You seem to be using that word a different way."

"Werewolves who don't obey our laws have relinquished their claim to humanity," said Umbridge. "It's the same thing."

Kingsley nodded to acknowledge this answer as well and took more notes.

Mad-Eye raised his hand. Umbridge searched the room for anyone else she could call on, but found no one. She grudgingly nodded to him.

"Any chance the Ministry will give us back the authority to use the three unforgivable curses? Those were damn useful in the war. I'm sure they'd be useful against suspected werewolves too."

"That is an excellent question, Mr. Moody," said Umbridge, surprised. "I'm afraid the answer is no at this point, although I will take it under advisement."

"Try to get around to it before I retire, will you?"

With that, the presentation was over, and the pink toad finally went away.

"Come back to my office for a minute before we go on patrol," said Mad-Eye. Tonks had to admit that Mad-Eye, on his wooden leg, probably moved through the grid of cubicles more gracefully than she did. While other Aurors worked out of cubicles, Mad-Eye had walled his cubicle in to form a cramped and private office. There hadn't been a rule against doing this until Mad-Eye had done it. No one had been willing to tell him he had to disassemble the fortress he'd built, so it stayed.

He unlocked his office with his wand and they entered and sat on the chipped wooden chairs. Moody's office was slightly dingy, as he didn't trust the custodial staff to come in and clean it.

Mad-Eye waved the door closed with his wand, then cast a few spells on it. "So," he said. "The Ministry's just grabbed a lot more power for itself. Now we have this ridiculous excuse to invade anyone's privacy. Werewolves are so evil, we get to look for them everywhere, and subject anyone to invasive tests."

"Happy?" asked Tonks.

Mad-Eye scowled. "If I was the only one with these new powers? Yeah, probably. But I know how our fellow Aurors will use them." While his brown eye remained fixed on her, his electric blue eye swiveled to face the door, from which an oddly muffled banging noise came a moment later.

Mad-Eye unlocked and opened it with his wand, and Kingsley Shacklebolt charged in, bringing with him a sense of menace. He made quite an imposing sight, with his Auror's uniform fitting perfectly over his broad shoulders. "Mad-Eye," he rumbled. "You're an embarrassment to the force. I don't know why we even allow you to mentor a trainee. I can see you're corrupting her already." He slammed the door behind him. As he continued speaking, "The Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic deserves our respect!" he gave a significant glance at the door, then raised an eyebrow at Mad-Eye.

"Of course I put silencing spells up, Kingsley!" exclaimed Mad-Eye. "You know me. Oh, and I saved you a donut."

"Thanks," said Kingsley, his deep voice now in a much friendlier tone. "Cinnamon?"

"Of course," said Mad-Eye, handing it over.

"Then consider yourself reprimanded," said Kingsley, sitting on the edge of Mad-Eye's desk and nibbling the donut. "Umbridge told Scrimgeour that I specifically should be the one to reprimand you, and teach you the proper way for a pureblood to behave." The three of them had a good laugh over that. "So we can use this time to discuss this new legislation. This is serious. We need to tell Dumbledore ASAP. Umbridge might as well have named this the Werewolf Pack Reinforcement Act. She's making it harder for werewolves to live in wizarding society, so they're inevitably going to join the feral packs, where they're much more of a danger to us."

Mad-Eye grunted. "Tonks, take notes. Let's try to fit the salient points in a patronus message, that'll be fastest."

The three of them looked at Umbridge's handouts and their notes and worked out the most alarming parts of the legislation. "Now we're supposed to enforce that old Impersonating a Human law," said Kingsley. "And we're also supposed to be really cracking down on wand use by half-breeds and inhuman beings. So if they try to live as normal witches and wizards, we arrest them for that, or if they admit they're not human, we arrest them for using wands, which only humans are allowed." Kingsley shook his head. "She just created a whole new class of criminals. And why should they obey any of our other laws when they're already breaking this one just by trying to live normal lives?"

"I don't think I can fit this in a patronus message," said Tonks.

"Yeah," agreed Mad-Eye. "Just tell Dumbledore the Protection Against Werewolves Act is very bad news, and the bits about strengthening Auror powers and werewolf packs in particular. We'll discuss it in detail later."

Kingsley and Mad-Eye were both looking at the young trainee expectantly. Tonks drew her wand, thought of the wall catching fire, chaos disrupting order, and said "Expecto Patronum!" Her patronus appeared, a glowing silver jackrabbit, comically awkward with its long legs and floppy ears. It always made her smile to look at it. She gave it the message to Dumbledore and sent it bouncing on its way, ears flapping, as it disappeared into whatever magical dimension it occupied between sender and receiver. Mad-Eye's office looked extra dark and dingy without its brilliant silver light.

"Can your patronus change appearance, like you?" asked Mad-Eye.

"Huh. I haven't tried," said Tonks. "I don't think so, but I don't really know."

"It would be right useful to impersonate someone else's patronus," said Mad-Eye. "Send a false message, lead someone into a trap. Everyone thinks they can't be tampered with. It would be perfect."

"You think like a dark wizard," said Tonks.

Mad-Eye smiled at the compliment.

Tonks's patronus reappeared in less than a minute, and said "Message received, thank you," in Dumbledore's concerned voice before fading.

"Now let's get to work. And remember—"

"Constant vigilance!" said Tonks. "I know, Mad-Eye."

"Scrimgeour gave us some leads to investigate today," said Kingsley, taking a sheaf of parchment out of his pocket. "He wants me to go with you two and keep you in line."

Tonks smiled, but Mad-Eye looked a bit miffed.

"Enforce the law, respect the public, no unforgivable curses, and try not to give the Obliviators too much work, all right?" added Kingsley.

"I didn't send all those Death Eaters to Azkaban by being a goodie two-shoes," grumbled Mad-Eye.

"This isn't wartime, Mad-Eye," said Kingsley. "No Death Eaters today. Just," he looked at the paperwork and sighed. "An awful lot of people accused of being werewolves. Well, let's get this over with."

They apparated to the street outside the first address on the list, a coffee shop in Diagon Alley. The patrons reacted to their arrival with a variety of interested looks and guilty starts.

The manager came out to greet them personally. "What can I get for you three? No need for you to wait in line, I'm sure you—"

"We're here on business," said Mad-Eye. He looked at his parchment. "We need to speak to Ismelda Cloop."

She was running to them already. "Yes, that's me, I flooed the Auror office to report a werewolf. John, our dishwasher—"

"John?" interrupted the manager. "You reported John as a werewolf? He's a damn good dishwasher."

"When I asked him if he would swap shifts with me so I could go to the Celestina Warbeck concert, he absolutely refused, and I couldn't get anyone to fill in for me so I had to miss it, and I remember when I got out of work that night it was a full moon—"

"So he's either a werewolf or a Celestina Warbeck fan who didn't want to miss the concert either," said Mad-Eye.

"Criminal either way," quietly commented Tonks, who was not a fan of sappy love songs.

"A scan should settle this quickly," said Kingsley. He drew his wand. "Where is he?"

"I'll show you," said Ms. Cloop, hurrying to the back.

"Wait," said Mad-Eye. "Does this place have a back door?"

"Yes," said the manager. "It opens to the alley in back.

"We have to guard all the escape routes before we attack," said Mad-Eye. "Kingsley, alley." Kingsley looked at Mad-Eye for a moment, then left the coffee shop to go around the back.

"Attack?" repeated the manager.

"And clear out all these bystanders," continued Mad-Eye, gesturing at the customers crowding around with interest. "Don't want anyone getting hit by a stray spell or flying rubble."

"Now wait just a minute here," sputtered the manager.

"Do it," barked Mad-Eye. "I always have to do extra paperwork when a bystander gets hurt, and I hate paperwork."

The manager and Ms. Cloop grudgingly kicked out all their customers.

Mad-Eye took his lookie-talkie out of his pocket, flipped it open, and said "Kingsley Shacklebolt."

The mirror quickly changed to reflect, not Mad-Eye's pale, scarred face, but Kingsley's dark, smooth one. "I'm in position," he said.

Mad-Eye said "Be ready" and put the lookie-talkie away.

Mad-Eye drew his wand and gave a significant look to Tonks, who drew hers as well as they approached the door to the kitchen. Mad-Eye had restored his usual silencing spells on his wooden leg, and his blue eye whirled in all directions while his brown eye stared fixedly at the door to the back room. Tonks couldn't help but think that his cautious, ambush-ready walk was completely out-of-place in a coffee shop.

Mad-Eye's whirling blue eye suddenly stopped, fixed on the door to the kitchen. He shouted " _Reducto_ " while waving his wand at the door, blasting it into splinters, and charged through the gaping hole.

"What are you doing?" shouted the manager, but Mad-Eye was gone, followed by Tonks. Mad-Eye continued his charge out the back door, which was open. Tonks hung back to scan the kitchen, but it was empty of beings. Then Tonks followed her mentor through the back door into the alley behind the coffee shop. She immediately tripped over Kingsley's body.

" _Stupefy_!" shouted Mad-Eye, shooting a bolt of red light down the alley, but Tonks heard the loud crack of disapparition an instant before she heard Mad-Eye's spell expend its energy by cracking a brick wall.

"Fast bugger," grumbled Mad-Eye, panting. "I'd have got him if we were still allowed to use the Unforgivables. I'm quicker with those."

Kingsley was still breathing. Blood was slowly spreading on the pavement below his bald head.

Tonks acted fast. A diagnostic scan revealed a scrape and a bump on Kingsley's head that wouldn't account for his unconscious state, but the stunner that had hit his chest explained that. She fixed his head injury with some healing spells and a few drops of dittany before waking him to his headache with a _Rennervate_. He opened his dark eyes and let out a quiet and very deep groan.

"Did I heal you all right?" asked Tonks.

"You did good work," said Kingsley. "Unlike me."

Now that the immediate emergency was handled, Tonks pulled her lookie-talkie out of her pocket.

Kingsley grabbed her pale wrist with his dark hand before she could open her lookie-talkie. "Don't you dare embarrass me by reporting an Auror down. I'm fine."

"But—"

"Mad-Eye, you don't want to do the paperwork for an Auror down, do you?" Kingsley called down the alley.

Mad-Eye was clomping back up the alley. "We've got a lot to do today, and extra paperwork and a trip to St. Mungo's would take up a lot of time."

"Exactly," said Kingsley, getting up and brushing off his uniform. "This didn't happen."

"But, assaulting an Auror..." Tonks trailed off helplessly.

"Don't make him _obliviate_ you, Tonks," said Mad-Eye. "You know how good Kingsley is at memory modification. If he wants to avoid embarrassment by pretending he didn't make a rookie mistake and get himself stunned by a dishwasher, we'll let him do that. He'll owe us a favor of course."

"Of course," agreed Kingsley.

"What happened?" asked Tonks.

"I must have blinked," said Kingsley. "I wasn't taking this seriously. The door suddenly opened, I saw a red stunner spell heading for me, and then Tonks woke me up."

"Well, no wonder that dishwasher ran out of here in a panic, after Mad-Eye blew up the door," said Tonks.

"You what?" said Kingsley disapprovingly to Mad-Eye.

"You didn't hear the explosion?" asked Tonks.

Kingsley shook his head, then said "Ow" and stopped.

"I blasted the door down after I saw the back door open," explained Mad-Eye. "That door I blasted was pretty thin. I could see right through it. I could see our suspect was making a run for it." He spun his blue eye for emphasis. Show off. "Blasting it was faster than opening it. I was almost fast enough. He disapparated as soon as he was clear of the anti-apparition wards on this business."

"Did you two get a good look at him?" asked Kingsley.

"First through a closed door, then as a speeding blur," said Mad-Eye. "No, not really."

"I didn't catch a glimpse," admitted Tonks.

A door to a neighboring business opened and a curious head poked out, a woman of about thirty. Tonks held back her impulse to scold her for sticking her head into potential trouble, and smiled at her instead. "Hello," she said, walking over. "Sorry about the noise. It's over now, though. Let me fix your wall. _Reparo_ ," she said, fixing the brick wall Mad-Eye's spell had cracked.

"What happened?" asked the woman

"Do you know John, who works at that coffee shop right there?"

The woman shook her head.

"I thought you might have seen him taking out the trash back here or something. He's the dishwasher."

"Oh! Him. New guy. I've seen him. He didn't tell me his name. Is he all right?"

"What do you know about him?"

"Nothing, really. I tried to make conversation, saying we got some cute new kneazle kittens in, (this is a pet shop), and would he like to see them, but he said no thank you. He's nice and polite. Is he all right?"

Tonks sighed. This was a dead end. "I don't suppose you'd know where he just apparated to?"

The woman shook her head.

"Well, if you can think of any clue where he might be, please floo-call the Auror office. Thank you for your time." Tonks headed back to see if her fellow Aurors were finding any better leads.

Mad-Eye and Kingsley were arguing.

"You don't need to blast through doors just to catch a dishwasher!" Kingsley was saying. "We're not battling Death Eaters anymore."

"We're hunting criminals, and werewolves—"

"And that dishwasher is innocent until proven guilty," said Kingsley.

"Then why did he run? Why did he stun you?"

"Because you blasted the bloody door down. You didn't even announce that we're Aurors. Anyone would panic in that situation. You're not the only person who's been paranoid since the war."

"But he opened the back door just before I—"

"We have some cleanup to do inside," Tonks pointed out.

"She's right," said Kingsley. "Come on, Mad-Eye. Let's see if that wand of yours is any good at peaceful spells, unless you'd rather fill out the paperwork to call a Ministry cleanup crew."

Whatever Mad-Eye might have grumbled in response to this was drowned out by the sounds of the manager and Ms. Cloop yelling at each other. "You can't fire me," Cloop was saying. "It's illegal to hire a werewolf, and I'll report you to the Aurors—"

"I hate to interrupt," said Mad-Eye, who loved to interrupt, "but blackmail is also illegal. And worse, you're doing it badly. Shouting your intent to blackmail in front of three Aurors is very sloppy, and also, you have no evidence. The suspect escaped."

Tonks and Kingsley got to work repairing the blasted door and doorframe, and the various coffee makers, mugs, plates, and furnishings that had had been damaged by flying rubble. Of course, the coffee itself was unrecoverable, spilled from the shattered carafes, and the baked goods, shredded and contaminated with shards of glass from the shattered display cases, were beyond salvage, so they vanished those.

Tonks had lots of experience with repair spells, and was pretty good at them. It was an advantage of being a klutz.

Mad-Eye also had lots of experience with repair spells, which was an advantage of being a paranoid veteran who shot first and asked questions later, if at all. He took over cleanup duties as Kingsley tried to interview Ms. Cloop and her boss about the suspect. The manager didn't know anything about his employee. He'd just showed up last month, without references, volunteering to prove himself by working for free for a day. He'd proved himself a hard worker and got hired, for cheap. Ms. Cloop, surprisingly, didn't know anything about him either. He was a nondescript middle-aged white guy.

"I need you both to think carefully. Can you remember anything else about him?" asked Kingsley, his dark eyes boring into both of them in turn.

No they couldn't. Kingsley sighed. As he was no longer casting repair spells, he put his wand away to free his hands for parchment and quill to write down the little they'd told him.

The other two Aurors finished their cleanup. "Good as new," said Mad-Eye proudly, looking around with both eyes, in different directions of course. Then he turned his brown eye on Ms. Cloop, although his blue eye still whirled in all directions disconcertingly. "Thank you very much for bringing this suspected werewolf to our attention, Ms. Cloop. I'm sorry we couldn't apprehend him this time. If you ever see him again, please contact the Auror department immediately. I'm sure we'll be able to bring him down with a powerful-enough assault force." He twisted his mutilated face into a grin. "Have a nice day."

Mad-Eye led the two other Aurors out of the coffee shop. "There!" he said proudly. "Can't get any more polite than that, right?"

Tonks and Kingsley couldn't suppress their laughter anymore. "I guess you can't," admitted Kingsley.

They jotted down their notes from the assignment, and headed to the next. Neither Kingsley nor anyone else got shot with any more stunning spells, although there were some close calls when someone made a fast move in Mad-Eye's presence. Tonks got some more practice with her repair spells. They didn't catch any werewolves.

They broke for a lunch of fish and chips, which Mad-Eye permitted them to eat only after he'd thoroughly scanned them for poisons. "Middle-aged white guy," complained Mad-Eye. "That's no clue at all. Of course, if she'd said middle-aged black guy—"

Kingsley suddenly drew his lookie-talkie from his pocket and opened it. "Yes?"

"I gave you a long list of leads to investigate today," said Scrimgeour's voice, "but this will make it easier for you. You can cross off a bunch of those leads." Kingsley got out his paperwork and crossed off several leads as Scrimgeour read them out.

"Have you signed those leads to other Aurors?" asked Kingsley.

"No," said Scrimgeour. "Our contacts floo-called back and said they were mistaken about their suspected werewolves. They're now certain that they're human, and don't want us to waste our time investigating them. Anyway, good job impressing the public with how seriously we're taking this. If we get any more of these cases, I'll be sure to assign them to you three."

"Thank you," said Kingsley. He closed his lookie-talkie. "You planned this," he said to Mad-Eye.

Suddenly a glowing silver phoenix appeared at their table, and addressed Tonks in Dumbledore's voice. "I have small favor to ask you. May I bring a friend to meet you at your flat at seven o'clock this evening?"

"Yes!" said Tonks, very excited. Mad-Eye had only just recommended her to Dumbledore as a new member of the second incarnation of the Order of the Phoenix, and she was eager for some assignments. The silver phoenix vanished to convey her reply to Dumbledore.

Tonks snarfed down the last of her chips and lemonade, then grabbed the parchment Kingsley had left on the table. "We can get this done by seven, no problem. Let's get to work."


	2. Chapter 2

2

Pack Mentality

Tonks apparated to the alley by her muggle block of flats. She entered her flat and looked around. Should she make some effort to clean up before Dumbledore arrived? Nah. He hadn't recruited her for her domestic skills. She put on a Weird Sisters album, got herself a butterbeer, sprawled on her couch, which was purple and orange paisley and very comfortable, and waited. It had been a long day already, and there was no telling how much longer it would get once Dumbledore arrived. She considered changing out of her uniform, but Dumbledore could be here any minute, and she didn't want to be caught half-changed.

When the doorbell rang, she saw Dumbledore through the peephole and let him in. He was shadowed by a grayish-brown slouch of a man, who immediately put his hands over his ears. Tonks turned off the music and he cautiously uncovered his ears.

"Wotcher, Dumbledore! Who's your friend?"

"Allow me to introduce Remus Lupin, whom I've just invited to rejoin the Order of the Phoenix. Remus, this is Tonks, a new addition to our Order. She came with the highest recommendation from Alastor Moody."

"Pleased to meet you," said Lupin quietly, eyes taking her in from pink hair, to young face, to Auror's uniform, to combat boots.

"Same here," said Tonks, wondering what use Dumbledore had for this thin, shabby man with a scarred face. He had the slouch of a tall man who didn't want to stand out.

"I believe his contributions will be invaluable to our cause," continued Dumbledore. "His help was essential during the war—"

Lupin involuntarily interrupted this praise with a disbelieving snort.

"And I'm sure he will serve us well again," Dumbledore blithely continued as if he hadn't heard. "He'll be going on a mission this very evening, infiltrating a werewolf pack. He needs your help."

"Him? In a werewolf pack?"

"Yes."

"Hell yeah, he needs a bodyguard. I mean, look at him. I'm glad to help, Dumbledore. I'll keep him safe. Just give me a moment to change out of this uniform and conceal some more weapons and we'll be on our way."

"My apologies, I didn't make myself clear. Lupin will be going alone. As you noticed, he doesn't look like someone you'd expect to see in a werewolf pack as anything other than dinner. He needs to blend in unobtrusively so he can spy undisturbed. I thought that you, with your great skills in disguise, could make him look a bit more like a werewolf before I send him off."

"This is the raw material I'm supposed to turn into a werewolf, Dumbledore? Is this one of your pretending-to-be-crazy-so-people-don't-realize-how-clever-you-are moments? He looks nothing like a werewolf, he looks like a, I don't know, a professor or something. I can't work miracles."

Dumbledore looked at Lupin as if he somehow hadn't realized this before, then turned back to Tonks. "I have complete faith in your abilities, Tonks. I'll be back in half an hour to take him to his mission." He left.

Tonks fixed her gaze on Lupin, who shrank under it. "Why'd he pick you for this mission?"

"I have some experience with dark creatures," Lupin said nervously.

"Such as?" she demanded.

"Well, my father was an exterminator. 'Lupin Pest Control, No Job Too Big or Too Small.'" He paused for a moment. "In retrospect, some jobs may have been too big."

Before she could express her skepticism of this credential, he added, "Dumbledore told me that you were the one who sent him a patronus about Umbridge's new anti-werewolf law. Thank you very much for bringing this to his attention. Most people would consider an anti-werewolf law to be beneath their concern, or would support it."

"Yeah, well, have you read the thing? It claims to keep us safe from werewolves, but really it's just an excuse to expand the Ministry's power in the name of safety. Under this law, humans can be treated as if we were no better than werewolves, with no human rights, until proven innocent. That's just wrong."

"Oh," said Lupin. "Yes, this law does infringe on human rights. It's terrible. You're quite right. Anyway, thank you for sending that patronus to Dumbledore. That's what prompted him to contact me after all these years, to let me rejoin the Order. There's a use for me again. This means the world to me. I can't thank you enough."

"I can't believe the mission he's sending you on though," she said. "Aurors wouldn't attempt to approach a werewolf pack without a large assault force. Dumbledore can't just send you in alone!"

"Why not?" asked Lupin.

"You could die!" explained Tonks.

There was a lull in the conversation after this. Lupin broke it to ask, "How is that a problem?"

There was another lull in the conversation.

"Oh!" said Lupin, as though just realizing something. "My death wouldn't create any more work for the Order. There won't be any call to bring my body back for a funeral. Anyone who might have mourned me died twelve years ago, as all my friends were Order members, and I was the only one among my friends who failed to die for our cause." He seemed dissatisfied with the results of his speech on her expression, which was not reassured.

She was about to take another swig of her butterbeer when she realized she wasn't being a good hostess. "Can I get you one? Or water or anything?"

"Oh, no thank you. I don't need anything, I'm fine."

Fine was not the word she would have chosen. "What is your mission exactly?" she asked.

"Simple, easy. Infiltrate a werewolf pack, look around and listen, then come back and copy my memories into a Pensieve for others to examine. Dumbledore needs to know how they're taking Umbridge's new law."

"You have a strange definition of simple and easy," said Tonks. "Werewolves are dangerous you know."

"More dangerous than humans?" he asked, disbelieving.

"Why is he sending you instead of me?" she said. "I could look more like a werewolf than you. Look." She transformed, making her features more wolfish, sharpening her teeth, adding a brutal strength to her jaw, a golden glint to her eyes. Her hair, from roots to ends, darkened from pink to dull brown, grew matted and greasy as it reached to her shoulders.

Lupin jumped back. "You're a metamorphmagus!" he said in amazement. He further explained, "That's the rare ability to magically transform seemingly intelligent people into idiots who say blatantly obvious things like 'You're a metamorphmagus!' instead of anything interesting or original."

"It's a curse," she laughed.

"You have my utmost sympathies."

"Thank you." She smiled with her sharp teeth. "So that's settled then. We'll explain to Dumbledore that I'm going on this mission instead of you."

"What? No. Absolutely not. And he'd never agree to it."

"Why?" she demanded.

"You said it yourself: it's dangerous," said Lupin, as if this was an answer.

"I've faced danger before," said Tonks, annoyed.

"You're an Auror," said Lupin.

"Well, a trainee, I'll complete my training soon—"

"You're an important source of information from the Ministry of Magic, so Dumbledore can keep track of what the Auror Department's up to. Not to mention this extremely useful metamorphmagus skill of yours. Dumbledore needs you to stay alive. You're too important to risk. I'm expendable." Lupin looked like a mild-mannered professor patiently explaining an obvious point to a slow student.

"What the hell do you mean, expendable? No human being is expendable."

Lupin paused before continuing his patient explanation. "If something's worth fighting for, it's worth dying for." He seemed compelled to try to smooth down the feathers he'd ruffled. He tried another tack. "I'll do my best to survive this mission, as the information has to get back to Dumbledore, but if I don't, no harm done. Don't be upset. It's really not a problem."

Tonks sighed, and her face settled into its usual heart shape, her hair into its usual pink spikes. "Well, I guess Dumbledore knows what he's doing. All right, let's see your werewolf face."

"My what?"

"You know, try to look like a werewolf. Many people don't know this, but they actually start off looking almost human for most of each month. Only the ones that let the wolf take over completely and have been feral for years have the fangs and everything even in their human guises, but you can at least do the expression. Come on. Look dangerous."

"Um," said Lupin. "I believe that Dumbledore brought me here only so I could acquire clothing that would better suit the role I'll be playing. He said you have quite an extensive collection. He didn't mention anything about me needing acting coaching."

Tonks shook her head. "It isn't enough to just have the right clothes. You need to really play the part. If those werewolves suspect you're really human, you'll be dead meat. So come on, really get into character. You're a werewolf! You're fierce! You're bloodthirsty! You're a ruthless killer!"

Lupin tried. Tonks buried her face in her hands. "Argh, you just don't have it in you. Look, your face is like this:" She quickly transformed her face to match his exactly, including every feature, scar, and mild, slightly worried expression. "Look, instead of that, do this." The face she was wearing suddenly smoldered with a deep rage.

"Is the pink hair a requirement? Since I don't think it's my color."

"Optional. I'll do a boy color so as not to threaten your masculinity." As he watched, her pink hair turned blue, via purple, from the roots to the ends. She glared at him with his own face from under an absurd crest of blue spikes.

"You can do this. Same bone structure, same muscles, just different expression. Now you try it," she said encouragingly. She looked at him trying and laughed. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but what was Dumbledore thinking? Let's put the face aside for a moment and see your werewolf walk."

"My what?"

"You know, prowl around like you're hunting for your next victim. Go on."

Lupin walked around the room a bit. He got distracted by the bookcase.

"Werewolves aren't bookish!" she scolded.

He gave a guilty start.

"Look, like this." She looked his body up and down and transformed fully. She had to wrestle off her combat boots, as they wouldn't accommodate his feet, but her brightly striped socks stretched to fit. Her

auror's uniform, which at least was unisex, looked too short on his body. She stalked around the room in a menacing way. The effect was unfortunately spoiled when she tripped over her own, or rather his, feet, and toppled to the floor.

Lupin rushed to help her up, but she scorned his assistance and lurched up under her own power. "How do you walk on these things?" she complained, indicating her copies of his feet, which were shrinking down to her usual size. The rest of her returned to normal (if pink hair can be considered such) but the glare continued unchanged, directed at him as if his big feet had tripped her on purpose.

"Sorry," he said automatically.

"Anyway, now you know what you're aiming for, so you try."

He tried, as she called suggestions to him to help him get into character. "The vicious instincts of a wolf in the body of a man. Your true self is physically revealed only at the full moon, but you are always, essentially, a beast. Aargh, this isn't working at all. I should make you read that book by Professor Picardy, but we've only got half an hour."

" _Lupine Lawlessness: Why Lycanthropes Don't Deserve to Live,"_ he said. "I noticed it on your shelf. I've read it already. I appreciate your concern, but Dumbledore did pick me for this mission because he believes my qualifications are sufficient. All I need from you is clothing to help me look the part." He was starting to sound a little testy.

She sighed, or perhaps her exhalation was more of a snort. "Maybe different clothes would help. What have I got that a ruthless killer would wear?" She suddenly looked pale, both face and hair, but quickly recovered. "Well, it's about time I found a use for it, it's just been taking up space in my closet. Wait here." She rushed off to a back room and soon returned holding a—

"Where did you get that?" exclaimed Lupin, showing much more emotion than she'd seen from him so far.

She looked at the black leather jacket in her hands. "It's, it was my cousin's," she said. "He won't be needing it. It's been in my closet for twelve years."

"You're Sirius Black's cousin?" exclaimed Lupin, backing away from her.

She started in horror at the sound of the name. "It's not like I approve of what he did! I had no idea what he was planning!" she shouted, not expecting to have to fight back tears today. "He acted so strange when he came to visit us that day, and he forgot his jacket when he left, to go, to... If we'd known he was going to kill all those people we would have stopped him!"

Lupin had backed away enough to hit the couch, on which he sat down weakly. "Don't blame yourself," he said. "I had no idea what he was planning either."

Tonks brushed a bit of dust off the jacket. "You knew Sirius?" she asked.

Lupin shook his head. "He was my best friend since I was eleven. I shared a dorm with him for seven years. I found out too late that I hadn't really known him at all."

They sat in silence for a bit. "Give me that jacket," said Lupin.

Tonks handed it to him, surprised.

Slowly, carefully, Lupin took off his own faded brown tweed jacket, put on the black leather one, and looked at himself in the full-length mirror by the door. A small note affixed to the mirror's frame at eye level said, "Remember ears."

"You're right," he said. "This does make me look like a ruthless killer. If Sirius weren't safely in prison right now, I'd kill him myself. The jacket works."

"It really does," said Tonks, who was a brave woman, but found herself clutching a pillow on the couch. Lupin undeniably looked like someone contemplating murder. Gold sparks seemed to blaze in his brown eyes when he looked at himself in the mirror.

Lupin caught her gaze in the mirror, then turned to look at her directly. "Thank you," he said. The gold glints before must have been a trick of the light, as his eyes, looking at her sympathetically, were clearly brown. "And I'm very sorry for upsetting you. I just wasn't expecting to be reminded of Sirius after all these years." He transferred his pocket contents, his wand and a muggle chocolate bar, from his brown jacket to the black. Then he sat as far as possible from her on the couch and looked at his hands, which, like his face, were netted with scars. "None of us can choose our blood. We can choose only our path." He looked at Tonks again. "I don't hold you at all responsible for the actions of your family."

"The noble and most ancient house of Black," she said with an eye roll. "Bunch of inbred nutters, the lot of them. I'm lucky enough never to have met most of them. They disowned my mum when she married a muggle-born. Sirius was the only one who ever had anything to do with us, but of course his name had been burned off the family tapestry too. I'm pretty sure I've escaped the family curse of being a nasty piece of work."

Lupin looked frozen. "That's what Sirius used to say, 'The noble and most ancient house of Black,' with an eye roll exactly like that."

"Merlin's balls, I must have got that from him. My mum invited him over all the time when I was a kid. He told the greatest stories, and let me sit on his lap. He just seemed so... I mean, he'd tell me he was pure evil, and going to corrupt me with his dark magic, but he really seemed like he was joking, you know? He said he was going to follow the family tradition and marry his cousin to keep the noble blood pure, and we'd have lots of cute little insane inbred babies. Don't look at me like that, it was a joke, at least it seemed like that's how he meant it. We obviously wouldn't marry each other, I was just a kid. He was much older than me. Still is, of course. Do you think he's still alive? Twelve years is a long time for anyone to survive in Azkaban, but you'd think it would have been in the paper if he'd died."

"So," said Lupin. He took a deep and somewhat shaky breath. "How did you come to know so much about werewolves?"

"Auror training," she said proudly. "We learn about all sorts of dark creatures.

"So this is all straight out of the official curriculum, is it?"

"Yes," she said. "And we all just got some extra training, because Umbridge's new Protection Against Werewolves Act really cracks down on inhuman beings trying to pass as humans. And of course, werewolves were covered in Defense Against the Dark Arts at school. We had to know how to identify and kill werewolves to pass the N.E.W.T.s. I aced that test."

"I did well on it also," said Lupin. "I know how to give the answers people want. But real life isn't a standardized test. I was just wondering how many werewolves you've met in person."

"Met in person?" She laughed to show her appreciation of the wittiness of his odd word choices. "I have seen them in real life. I saw some that my Auror colleagues captured in a raid."

"And the ones you saw looked angry, did they?"

"Yes," she said. "Ferocious."

"Ah. Dumbledore will be back soon, right?" said Lupin, standing up and starting to pace. Tonks was proud to see he had the werewolf walk down. He paced like a caged predator. When he wasn't slouching, he was intimidatingly tall.

"No rush," said Tonks. She laughed. "You'd better not let any Aurors see you like this, or they'll round you up like a real feral werewolf."

Lupin turned his back to her and stared out the window, gripping either side of the window frame with his scarred hands as if to stop himself from leaping through the glass. He took some deep breaths. "Lovely weather," he said.

She looked at him admiringly. "I'm sorry."

Lupin spun to face her. "For what?"

"I really underestimated your acting skill. You don't even look like you're trying to look angry, you look like you're furious and trying to calm down."

"I don't recall asking your opinion," said Lupin with a slight growl.

"You've even got the voice perfect!" admired Tonks.

The doorbell rang. Lupin leaped to peer through the peephole, then wrenched the door open. "Let's go," he said to Dumbledore.

"An amazing transformation!" said Dumbledore. "I knew I could count on you, Tonks. Thank you."

Lupin tried to leave, but Dumbledore blocked the doorway. "We're not in such a hurry that we have to rush off without saying goodbye."

Lupin turned to Tonks. He must have at least a touch of metamorphmagus ability, she thought, to get that wolfish yellow glint in his eyes.

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Tonks. Thank you for all your help. I hope we'll meet again. Goodbye," said Lupin, after a few measured breaths.

"But if not, no problem, right?" she quipped.

"Of course," said Lupin agreeably. "Although I apologize in advance in case I can't return this jacket."

"Goodbye, Tonks," said Dumbledore. "And don't worry, I'll have more adventurous assignments for you in the future."

Tonks smiled, for Dumbledore knew her well. Then he and Lupin left.

Tonks looked at the faded brown tweed jacket draped across the arm of her couch. "You'd better come back, Lupin," she muttered, thumping it with her fist. "I don't want this taking up space in my closet for years."

—-

He was back the next evening.

"Thank you very much for the use of your jacket," Lupin said. He took it off and tried to hand it to her, but she wouldn't take it.

"Keep it," she said. "It looks good on you."

"Says someone with pink hair," he said.

"Hey! Someone who wears a ratty old thing like this has no right to criticize anyone else's taste." She threw his faded old brown tweed jacket at him.

He caught it. "You're right of course," he said, looking at it, and she felt bad for attributing his clothes to his taste, when his finances might be more to blame.

"Look, just keep Sirius's jacket, OK?" she said. "If you get another werewolf assignment, you'll have it handy."

Lupin sighed, and put his old jacket on. It made him look entirely old and faded, as if he were made of dust. He transferred the contents of his pockets, chocolate bar and wand, from the black leather jacket to his brown tweed as he spoke. "Aside from the fact that's it's not to my taste, there's a good chance I won't get any more werewolf assignments, so I'll have no need of it," he said. "The werewolves seem like a lost cause. Of course they're not taking the new law well, and some dark wizard is exploiting their desperation. Greyback, the leader of this pack, seems dead set on cooperating with any dark wizard who offers to overthrow the Ministry of Magic, with the idea that a new human regime would somehow treat werewolves any better than the current one. This dark wizard hasn't given his name in his communications with Greyback, but his offer is much the same as the one He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named made in the war, so either he's plotting a return or has an imitator. Greyback is gullible enough to fall for the same line again, which is the kind of problem a society suffers when they choose their leaders through a physical fight rather than a test of political prowess. Many, maybe a majority, of the pack members disagree with Greyback on this, but they're afraid to stand up to him. The pack does what the leader does. Dumbledore says there's no hope."

"Well, what hope could there have been?"

"It would be much better for the werewolves to stay neutral than fight on a dark wizard's side," said Lupin. "They would, but for the whim of their leader."

"Well, this is as good an excuse as any for the Aurors to round them all up," said Tonks. "I mean really, they're much too dangerous to be allowed to roam free, whether they're working for a dark wizard or not. And they could be put to good use. The Werewolf Research Institute always needs more experimental subjects."

"Ah. So I've heard. Well. Thank you again for the jacket and for all of your help. Goodbye." Lupin suddenly got up and left, taking the black jacket with him.

I was much too tough on his taste in clothes, thought Tonks. She looked out her window to see him emerge from her building.

Once outside, Lupin looked up at the sky. The moon was nearly full. He stretched, and took a few deep breaths. Tonks was surprised to see him take off his brown jacket, transfer his pocket contents, chocolate bar and wand, back to the black jacket, and put that on instead. Then he folded his brown jacket and tucked it out of the way behind a planter in front of her building. Then he stood and strode away. Tonks recognized his predator walk.

Where was Lupin going in Sirius's black leather jacket, which he'd claimed was not to his taste?

This was a mystery. She ran out to follow him, changing her appearance on the way. Mousy brown hair was much better than pink for trailing someone unnoticed, and, being her natural color, took no effort to maintain.

It was a breezy evening. The wind kept blowing in her face as if trying to slow her down. She followed his confident, predatory stride along a meandering route, into a wooded park.

She really should go home, as she was quite behind on chores. Laundry was piling up. Also, did she even have any food in her flat for breakfast? She was overdue to go grocery shopping. Eggs, bacon, fruit... She should make a list. She had a scrap of paper and a pencil stub with her, but it was dark here, so she should go back to where there was more light so she could write properly. Once she was in the shop, if she didn't have a list, she knew she'd get distracted by those cheerfully-colored breakfast cereals—

Distracted. Tonks recognized a distraction spell when she felt one. She cast the counterspell, and a silence spell on her feet for good measure, to stop their crunching in the dry leaves. She continued to creep forward, toward Lupin and his mysterious destination, deeper into the woods. Even the wind seemed to conspire against her, blowing in her face as if trying to push her back, but it wasn't very strong.

Lupin stopped, so Tonks did too. Two figures approached him from the shadows. After a brief discussion, they waved him forward, then slunk back to the shadows.

Sentries. How close could she get without them noticing her? Stealth was not her strong suit, but she gave it a try, and congratulated herself on her success. The sentries took no notice of her. In truth, they were looking forward to where Lupin had gone, more than back towards her, which was presumably their job. Lupin must be doing something interesting.

She silently cast a night vision spell on her eyes. That was much better. There was Lupin, lying on his back on the ground, at the center of a forest clearing. He was arching his head back to expose his neck, pale against his black leather jacket. An enormous werewolf loomed over him, teeth bared, poised over Lupin's neck. Perhaps a hundred more werewolves were gathered around, silently watching this tableau. No one, not even the sentries, was paying any attention to Tonks.

All the werewolves were in their more-or-less human guises, of course, as the moon was not yet full to reveal their true selves. The massive werewolf poised over Lupin's neck looked the least-human of them all. His teeth, gleaming in the light of the nearly-full moon, were the pointed teeth of a carnivore. His nails were black claws. His eyes gleamed gold. His wild hair was grey, and his grey beard covered more of his face than was usual for humans.

His black leather jacket, in a style similar to what Lupin was wearing but more worn and dirty, must have been custom-made, or modified by magic, to fit over the boulder-like muscles of his shoulders and arms. Such tough, armor-like clothing seemed popular among this crowd. Tonks's jeans, denim jacket, and combat boots should blend in reasonably well if anyone spotted her. She adjusted her features to be a bit more feral, added a gold glint to her eyes, and grew her hair longer, more tangled and greasy. Perfect.

After what seemed an eternity to Tonks, this massive werewolf drew back from Lupin's neck. Then he offered a hand to Lupin. Lupin accepted this assistance and gracefully rose to his feet.

Then the two of them had a discussion that Tonks couldn't quite hear. Neither, apparently, could the sentries, but they considered the discussion interesting enough to abandon their posts to get closer. This enabled Tonks to creep further forward without them noticing her.

What in Merlin's name was Lupin doing? He'd been so good up to this point, but now she cringed as traces of professorial mannerisms crept into his movements. He looked like he was giving a lecture. Tonks crept closer. She could hear a few of his words, like "humans," spoken more loudly, and with contempt.

The wind shifted, wrapping her brown hair from the back of her head into her face. Then quite a lot of things happened in very quick succession. As she tucked her hair back, a hundred pairs of gold-glinting eyes turned in her direction. Many of the werewolves started to run towards her, none quite as fast as Lupin, who was sprinting so fast he was just a blur, while drawing his wand from the sleeve of Sirius's jacket. She turned on the spot,

seemingly in slow motion. It was dangerous to attempt to apparate while distracted, but staying here was considerably more dangerous. She tried willing herself to the street outside her flat, destination, determination, deliberation— Damnation, she felt herself slam against an anti-apparition ward. It was a standard security feature for buildings, so why not for werewolf-infested forests? Werewolves could do magic too, at least the ones that had started out as witches and wizards instead of muggles.

She pressed her thumbnail into her ring, breaking the seal, sending a distress call back to Auror headquarters, as she heard Lupin shout " _Petrificus totalus!"_ She froze and fell to the ground with a thud. Lupin grabbed her wand from its holster and tucked it in his sleeve. Then, with surprising strength considering his slight frame, he grabbed her and dragged her back to the massive werewolf. He then dropped her, none too gently, on the dead leaves at the werewolf's feet.

"I've captured a human spy!" said Lupin, panting.

"Why didn't you let the pack rip her to shreds?" asked the huge werewolf.

"I assumed you'd want to question her first," said Lupin. "And that you as pack leader should decide her fate."

"Well done, Lupin," said the werewolf. Presumably this was Greyback, the pack leader Lupin had mentioned. "As your reward, you may have her second."

"Excuse me?" said Lupin.

"After me, but before the rest of the pack."

"Ah. Because you're pack leader, of course."

"You're catching on." Greyback crouched over Tonks and sniffed her crudely. That close, he smelled like an unpleasant combination of unwashed man and wild animal. "Ah, the smell of fear," he said appreciatively, smiling with his pointed teeth. "The most delicious sauce for meat." He stepped back and magnanimously invited Lupin to take a whiff.

Lupin stepped forward, and put his head down by Tonks's neck. It was a good indication of her relative mood that the smell of Sirius's jacket was a comfort to her at this moment. Leather, faint traces of motorcycle fumes, smoky bars, and Sirius's cologne combined to remind her, not of the mass murderer he later became, but the cousin who told such exciting tales of adventures. Sirius's old scent in the jacket was now overlaid with a fresher fragrance of chocolate.

Lupin whispered "Don't run. Pretend you're still petrified," hurriedly in her ear, then quickly whispered _Finite Incantatem_ to undo his earlier spell. This also undid her night vision spell, but she could see well enough at this close distance. She was free, if being unpetrified but surrounded by werewolves counted. "And don't you dare blow my cover by helping me," he added.

"I've called the Aurors," she whispered back. "Stall until they get here."

She'd been hoping for a better reaction from Lupin than seeing his eyes suddenly widen with horror, but the look was gone so quickly, perhaps she'd misinterpreted it. Lupin changed his expression to a leer to match his putative activity as he stood up. Merlin's balls, he really was channeling Sirius for his werewolf persona.

He didn't maintain the leer for long, though, falling back into his default professorial look. "This is just an interruption to our earlier discussion," he said calmly, focused on Greyback without a glance at Tonks.

Tonks reflected that he still sounded absurdly like a professor rather than a werewolf. How could he possibly pass for one when she, in her best disguise, didn't?

"As I was saying earlier, humans are not to be trusted," lectured Lupin. He may have ostensibly been addressing his speech to Greyback, but his intended audience was clearly the entire pack. "The sudden appearance of this human spy fortuitously illustrates my point quite well. Who sent her? A dark wizard? The Ministry? It doesn't matter, since they're all humans. We can't trust any of them. A long line of dark wizards have attempted to win our favor for their own purposes. They've all made pretty promises, and none of them have delivered." He looked Greyback in the eyes. "I came here seeking a strong werewolf leader, not just another follower, particularly not someone who follows a human."

Greyback growled. "I am the leader of this pack. I have decided to accept this dark wizard's offer. Are you challenging my authority over this pack?"

"Why yes, I suppose I am," said Lupin mildly. "This pack deserves to be led by a werewolf, not some human's lapdog."

Greyback, growling, stepped over Tonks neatly as he approached Lupin. "Put away your wand and fight like a werewolf," he said.

"The word 'werewolf,'" said Lupin, his voice clear and steady as he took a few relaxed strides around the blood-spattered dead leaves of the clearing, "is compounded of two Old English words, 'wer' meaning man, and 'wolf,' the meaning of which is obvious. Thus—"

"Is this a challenge or a lesson?" shouted Greyback.

"Both, actually," said Lupin, smiling. "You're being schooled, not by a brutish beast, but by a werewolf, combining all the skills of man and wolf. I bring all my weapons to this duel, including the human ones, for they are as much a part of me as my teeth are. Standard dueling rules: All magic permissible aside from the three unforgivable curses. No interference from spectators. We fight until one of us yields. Agreed?"

Greyback nodded. "Agreed." He crouched back on his haunches, seeming to retreat.

Lookout, Lupin! Thought Tonks, but she knew that speaking a word of warning to Lupin would reveal their alliance. She could only watch as Greyback coiled like a spring and sprung at Lupin, teeth bared and claws outstretched.

" _Arresto momentum_!" said Lupin, and Greyback's leap stopped in midair. He hovered for a moment, then dropped as gravity remembered him.

Lupin laughed. "I will defeat you thoroughly, humiliatingly, and just for fun, alphabetically."

Lupin next flung a bat bogey hex at Greyback, who was overcome with a sneezing fit, each sneeze launching a bat out of his nose to flap around his face annoyingly.

"You call these pranks a duel?" scorned Greyback. The gravity of his words was somewhat diminished by his sneeze of another bat.

" _Confringo_ ," Lupin said in a calm, quiet voice, aiming his wand carefully in front of Greyback at the ground, which exploded into a gaping crater, raining flaming rubble and glowing orange rocks on the crowd. He raised his wand to wordlessly form a shield to deflect burning debris from himself.

"You missed," said Greyback, shaking a few embers out of his hair.

"Had I wanted to kill you, you would be dead," explained Lupin. "I want you to yield. This pack can use a strong fighter such as yourself. I would be a foolish leader to waste you."

Greyback took another flying leap at Lupin.

" _Depulso_ ," said Lupin, seeming bored. Greyback abruptly reversed direction in midair and sped backward to slam into a tree trunk. He slid down it to the ground, shaken. Merlin, thought Tonks. Lupin has good aim, to catch a leaping werewolf in midair twice now.

Greyback finally drew his wand and aimed it at Lupin.

"Expelliarmus," said Lupin immediately, and Greyback's wand jumped from his hand. Lupin caught Greyback's wand neatly out of the air and laughed as he tucked it into his sleeve. "Did your human master throw you this stick for a game of fetch? You don't seem to know how it works."

That was all well and good, but Tonks had a dilemma. On the one hand, she should pretend to be immobilized. On the other hand, a fragment of orange-hot rock from Lupin's _Confringo_ spell had landed on the dead leaves near her, igniting a fire which was crackling its way towards her with increasing speed. What would a paralyzed human spy who was definitely not in league with Lupin the amazing dueling werewolf do? After careful consideration, she had to conclude that, if the spell had started to wear off at all, she would probably let out a panicked scream. So, in the interest of authenticity—

Lupin's head swung in her direction at the sound. " _Aqua eructo_ ," he said, directing a jet of water from his wand to extinguish the flames as he ran toward her. "Damnit, that's out of alphabetical order, but I do prefer my meat raw."

Don't warn him don't warn him don't warn him—

Greyback pounced on Lupin's back, knocking him to the ground. With a clawed hand, he grabbed Lupin's right hand, then stomped on Lupin's right arm so violently that Tonks heard something crack as Lupin lost his grip on his wand.

"Ah, now I smell fear," Greyback said, smiling, as he knelt on Lupin's back and neck. "You put up a good human-style fight, I'll grant you that," he said admiringly as he bent Lupin's hand further back, contorting his wrist into an increasingly impossible angle. "But the wolf always wins in the end. Yield."

Lupin made some sort of noise, but it was unintelligible, considering his face was pressed into the ground, and, with Greyback's considerable weight on his back, he had very little lung power at his disposal.

Greyback, considering this, got off Lupin's back, but kept a firm grip on his hand, and another on his forearm, keeping his wrist warped. "Yield," he said. "Some of my pack have healer training. They can fix your wrist in a moment." He emphasized this point with another jerk of Lupin's broken wrist.

Lupin slowly shifted his position to face Greyback.

"You've earned yourself a place in my pack," said Greyback, "and a high rank, but not, of course, as—"

He didn't get to finish his sentence because Lupin had sprung at him and bitten his neck. The fact that this spring bent his wrist into an even more extreme angle seemed not to concern him at all. Greyback kicked and shoved him away with difficulty, losing his grip on Lupin's arm. Lupin fell away, spitting blood as he sprang to his feet. His right hand hung uselessly.

Greyback charged at Lupin, swinging a clawed hand at his face. Lupin dodged, grabbed Greyback's hand with his left hand, and pulled, causing him to topple over. Lupin stomped a foot on his back. "Yield!" shouted Lupin. "Don't make me bite you again, you taste disgusting. Wait. What's that noise?"

Greyback listened. "Hippogriffs," he said.

"Aurors?" asked Lupin.

"Probably," said Greyback. "We'll have to continue this later."

"Of course," said Lupin. He took his foot off Greyback's back, then offered his left hand to help him up.

Greyback accepted Lupin's assistance graciously and rose to his feet. "Raid!" he called to his pack. "Scatter!" The pack disappeared into the woods. "Take care, son. This pack will need a new leader if the Aurors catch me. Don't forget your wand." He picked it up and handed it to Lupin, who took it with his left hand.

"Don't forget yours," said Lupin. He awkwardly offered his sleeve for Greyback to draw his wand himself. Then they bolted in opposite directions.

The flapping noise got louder, and a sudden wind blew dead leaves and dust into the air. Hippogriffs, perhaps a dozen of them, ridden by Aurors flinging spells down at the mob.

Tonks jumped to her feet. "Here!" A hippogriff swooped low, and she grabbed its harness, hauling herself up sit behind the Auror on the saddle, who was, of course, Paul. She sighed.

"In need of rescue, I see," he said, smiling.

"There was another human down there!" Tonks cried over the rushing wind. "We have to save him!"

Paul scanned the ground with his wand. " _Homenum Revelio!_ I'm not finding anyone."

"But he was there! We can't just leave him!"

"This scan wouldn't pick him up if he were already dead," he said.

"Scan further. He runs fast."

"If he's fast enough to outrun werewolves, he doesn't need our help. Come on, lets stun some of these werewolves so the hippogriffs can pick 'em up. Wait. You OK? You need a healer or something? I can take you back to base instead."

Tonks was thinking. There were shield spells that could fool a scan, but could Lupin have cast one with a broken wrist? And why would he hide from Aurors?

"I lost my wand," she said.

"Down there?"

"Yes."

" _Accio_ Tonks's wand," said Paul. It took a moment, but her wand flew to his hand from a shadowy clump of bushes. He handed it to her.

"Thanks," she said.

"Now let's kick some werewolf butt," he said.

"I see one there," she said, pointing some distance away from the clump of bushes from which her wand had flown.

Paul guided his hippogriff in the direction she was pointing, and he and Tonks sent stunning spells at everything that moved. The hippogriffs swooped down to grab the unconscious bodies with their talons, carried them to a holding cell, subtly glowing with anti-escape charms, and dropped them in a pile.

After work, the wind brought rain. Tonks apparated to the alley beside her building. Lupin's faded brown jacket was still stashed behind the planter in front of her building, doing a very good impression of dead leaves that happened to have blown there. She pulled it out gingerly. It was patched, faded, and worn beyond repair, but it would not be improved by being rained on. She took it inside, hazarded a few gentle cleaning and drying spells, and hung it in the closet space she'd optimistically considered newly vacant. It still smelled faintly of chocolate.

—-

He didn't turn up until three days later. She peered over her bowl of brightly colored breakfast cereal and saw him out the window, wearing Sirius's black leather jacket, and looking dejectedly behind the planter where his brown jacket wasn't.

She sprinted downstairs to him. He started at the sight of her uniform and seemed about to bolt, but stopped when he noticed her pink hair.

"Wotcher, Lupin! How's your wrist?"

"What?" He looked like he'd been dragged through hell. New bruises, scratches and barely-healed cuts marred his face and hands, and she got the impression he had neither eaten nor slept since she'd seen him last. Presumably, he'd battled something significantly worse than the werewolf pack leader since they'd parted. She gulped. Dumbledore had told her that the Order of the Phoenix went on dangerous missions, but perhaps she hadn't quite understood what he'd meant...

"My wrist?" he blinked at both his wrists blearily. "Oh, from the duel with Greyback, this wrist." The right one. "That was days ago. I fixed that right away. I've had a lot of practice casting healing spells left-handed. I've even had to hold my wand with my toes on occasion."

"So what else happened to you?"

"I don't suppose you've seen my jacket? I left it here, since I didn't want to carry it."

"Why on earth didn't you just leave it in my flat?"

"I didn't want to bother you to retrieve it."

"Bother me? Don't be ridiculous. Now, having to pick it up after it had been rained on and do some drying spells on it, that was a bother. Household spells aren't really my thing. You should have just left it with me in the first place. Come on, it's upstairs."

"Are you on your way to work? You're in your uniform."

"Well, yes, but I have a few minutes before I have to go."

"You could just bring it down on your way out. I'll wait here."

"Have you had breakfast?"

"There's no need to trouble yourself—"

"You're coming with me." With a gesture that owed more to her Auror training than to any tradition of hospitality, she grabbed his arm and hauled him up to her flat.

"Sit," she said, pointing to the couch. He sat.

She went to her kitchen. "Have some... I have cereal. I think this is shaped like some muggle cartoon character, with rainbow marshmallows. I'm sorry, I'm out of eggs and such. If cereal's not your thing, I have... some canned soup. And some frozen Indian entrees. And some leftover Chinese takeaway— ew, no, I'll just throw this away, sorry. What can I get you? Lupin?"

She went back to her living room. Lupin had collapsed on the couch, asleep, or unconscious anyway. He was breathing. She drew her wand and scanned him for injuries. His broken wrist had indeed been properly fixed, and now just needed time. Numerous other cuts and bruises had already been partially healed by spells. He apparently hadn't bothered with various minor injuries, or had run out of energy before he got to those. Annoyingly, Sirius's jacket was in much better shape than Lupin's skin. The whole point of a jacket like this was to protect against cuts and scrapes, but it worked only while actually wearing it, which he apparently hadn't been when whatever it was had happened. Her diagnostic spells detected numerous injuries under his clothes. There was no time to uncover and heal them, as she had to get to work, and he obviously needed sleep so it was better not to wake him.

She grabbed parchment and quill and scribbled a note:

Lupin,

Help yourself to anything, kitchen, wardrobe, whatever. I should be back by 7. Stay. Rest.

Tonks

Dumbledore trusts him, she reminded herself. That was that, he was trustworthy. Even though he ran from Aurors.

She popped back at lunchtime to check on him. She tried to open the door quietly so as not to wake him—

" _Petrificus totalis_!" she heard in his hoarse voice, then, "Oh god, I'm sorry," before she hit the floor. " _Finite Incantatem_ ," he added apologetically, then put his wand away and got off the couch to help her up.

"Um, our lunch might be a bit mushed," she said, as she'd fallen on the takeaway bag.

"I'm terribly sorry. You woke me up. I wasn't thinking."

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," she said. "I got you some dittany, and some blood replenishing potion. Drink up."

"All I need is my jacket, and I'll be on my way," he said. "I can't keep wearing this one, the smell gives me nightmares, but I was so cold—

"Oh shut up about the stupid jacket. You need a visit to St. Mungo's, but I assume you have some reason for not taking yourself there, so I'm not going to drag you. I assume you also had some good reason to decline a rescue by the Aurors I called. Now that I know, I won't trouble you with any more Aurors, except for me and Moody and such who are also Order members. Right?"

Lupin looked surprised and slightly scared, then gave a grateful nod. "Thanks."

"What you need is food and rest and time to recover from whatever you've been through. You can do that here or somewhere else if you prefer, but I'm not going to just let you out on your own in this state. I could call a friend of yours to pick you up if you like. I could call Dumbldore to tell him you're here."

Lupin shook his head. "No need to trouble Dumbledore. He'll be able to find me the next time he has a mission for me."

"You— I have just a few minutes for lunch before I have to go back. She grabbed some flattened food from the takeaway bag and gulped it. "Can I bring you anything when I come back?" she asked, still chewing inelegantly.

"You've done too much for me already."

"Quit it. I'm off. Stay. I'll be back later."

—-

It seemed not just polite but wise to ring her own doorbell, to try to avoid the fight-or-flight response she'd gotten at lunchtime. Lupin didn't answer. She sighed. He must have bolted.

She unlocked and opened her door. She didn't see him.

" _Petrif_ — Oh, it's you," said Lupin from his hiding place by the bookshelf, as he put away the wand he'd pointed at her.

"Nice to see you too," said Tonks. "Who did you think I was?"

He shrugged. "You rang this time. You didn't last time."

"Lupin?"

He looked at her.

"Will I wind up like you and Moody after I've been in the Order for a few years?" was what she wanted to ask, but she didn't want to hear his reply, which would inevitably be, "If you survive," so she didn't.

"A bunch of good restaurants around here deliver," she said instead, getting the stack of menus from the kitchen and handing them to him. "Pick one while I see what I can do about these injuries. Hey. It looks like you got 'em."

"I told you, I'm pretty good with healing spells. And thank you very much for the potions, and for lunch. I'm feeling much better. I'll be on my way as soon as I get—"

"That damn jacket, right. Sentimental value?"

"No, it's just the only one I have. I know it's not much, but it's mine. I feel ridiculous in this black leather thing."

"I told you to help yourself to anything from the wardrobe. Your jacket's in there."

"I'm not going to rummage through your wardrobe!"

"I've got all sorts of stuff in there, including the nonthreatening male look you're going for. Good for surveillance. We'll find something for you while we wait for delivery. Did you pick something? Do you like Thai? I could kill a coconut curry."

"Look, I'm not going to let you buy me dinner—"

"Fine, you can pay if you insist."

"Um. I'm sorry, no I can't."

"Oh." She felt bad for having put him in this position. "It doesn't matter. How about pizza? What do you like on it? I'm thinking spinach and pepperoni."

"No."

"Peppers? Onions? Mushrooms?"

"I said no."

"Too late." She'd picked up her phone, placed the order, gave her address, got her muggle money handy. "The least I can do is feed you while you tell me what I did wrong back on your werewolf mission. That will obviously take a while, since I botched that quite thoroughly."

Lupin said nothing.

"I know, where to begin, right? I'm a new Auror and a brand-new Order member, so obviously I have a lot to learn. I'll do better the next time I encounter werewolves."

"No! God no! Stay away from werewolves, Tonks. They're much too dangerous."

She gave him the hairy eyeball, but he continued undeterred.

"Promise me you'll stay away from werewolves. Please, Tonks. Please. The Order can't spare you. We need you for other assignments."

"Tell me what was wrong with my disguise. I thought I looked just like a feral werewolf."

"You did look just like one. That's not enough, and it doesn't really matter. You smell like a human. As soon as the wind shifted, everyone knew exactly what you were."

"Damn. I didn't think of that. All right, teach me whatever spell you use to fix that."

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"Is your wardrobe this way?" Lupin seemed torn between escaping into the bedroom and respecting her privacy.

"Yeah," she said, giving up one argument to focus on another. "I'm sure I have a bunch of stuff that would fit you."

But she couldn't convince him to accept anything besides his original rags by the time the pizza was delivered. At least he didn't object when she put a slice in front of him, but ate it in silence. She put another slice in front of him when the first was gone.

Too much silence. "Lupin. Or should I call you Remus? I'd say you could call me by my given name if I didn't hate it, so you're stuck calling me Tonks, but I figured I'd ask which name you'd prefer I use for you."

"I don't care. I answer to Remus, Lupin, You Idiot, whatever."

She laughed. "You're definitely not an idiot."

"Oh, you have no idea."

She punched his recently-healed shoulder. "Now you're just fishing for compliments with that self-deprecating thing you do. Quit it."

"No, I—"

"Shut up and let me apologize."

"For what?"

"I insulted you when Dumbledore first introduced us. I assumed you couldn't hold your own on a solo mission, and I was wrong."

"Oh. You're apologizing for that? I took no offense at that, I assure you. I don't need you to praise my performance. I was just lucky this time."

"Dumbledore doesn't recruit people into the Order of the Phoenix based on how lucky we are."

"No, we survive based on how lucky we are."

"Lupin, just shut up and accept a compliment, all right? I saw you. You were amazing. You saved my life, and not through luck, after I stupidly wandered into danger. Thank you. You dueled a werewolf pack leader and nearly won. I've never seen reflexes and quick thinking under pressure like that in my life. Not to mention that your disguise obviously worked a lot better than mine."

"Tonks, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that I value your opinion of me. I didn't save your life because I wanted to hear you compliment me, or spend any more time in your company than absolutely necessary. I saved your life because you're a useful part of the Order, less disposable than most."

She hung her head. "I'm sorry," she said.

"For what this time?" he said testily.

"I know I've done something else to offend you, but I won't know what it is unless you tell me. So tell me. We've been completely on the wrong foot since we met and I want to fix it. We should be getting along great. We're both fighting on the same side."

She waited, but he said nothing. To fill the silence, she hazarded, "I insulted your clothes before?"

"What?"

"I insulted your jacket. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult your taste in clothes. Let me make it up to you, please. I know! I'll take you shopping! Let me buy you a new outfit!"

"Oh Merlin. You think I'm upset because you insulted my clothes?" He was having trouble breathing, he was laughing so hard. "What is it with your family trying to dress me up like a doll? You sound just like Sirius, telling me I needed to wear tight black jeans like him, and then I'd be just as successful with the ladies." His laughter was sounding hysterical. "'Remus,'" he quoted in an upper-class tone that was achingly familiar, "A butt like yours is nature's gift to womankind. You have an obligation to show it off. I may be heir to the Black family fortune, but that perky ass of yours is a treasure that far exceeds mine.' You wouldn't believe the flamboyant stuff he tried to buy me. Well, it was the seventies, so you can imagine." It was hard to tell if Lupin was laughing or crying.

Tonks waited for Lupin's laughing fit to run its course, then offered him one of the paper napkins that had come with the pizza. He accepted it, wiped his eyes, and took a few shuddering breaths. "So in conclusion," he said with surprising steadiness, as if wrapping up a lecture, "no, I am not letting you buy me clothes."

"I'm not my cousin," she said sullenly.

"No, of course you're not, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. You have every right to feel insulted."

"No, thanks for the story about him. I can just picture him saying that." She smiled. "Anyway, my offer still stands. I will buy you the clothes you choose, and share my opinions of your clothing or butt only by request."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to be in your debt."

"You saved my frickin life, Lupin! This doesn't begin to balance the debt I owe you."

"Just no."

"Then let me buy you a drink."

"I don't think that would be appropriate. We're coworkers."

"We're in a secret volunteer guerrilla group! The Order of the Phoenix doesn't have a sexual harassment policy. I can buy you a drink if I damn well please!"

"What? You're not— You couldn't possibly— I mean, we're sharing a pizza, but don't mistake this for some sort of... date." He quickly said, "Tonks, there's something you should know about me," then seemed to run out of breath.

Tonks looked at him. Lupin looked away.

"Well, yes," she finally said. "I do want to know about you. That's why I invited you out for a drink. That's the whole point, talking to each other so we get to know various things about each other. Come on. I'll buy the first round. I'll let you buy the second if you insist on being fair. Oh, sorry, I should have thought before I said that."

"No, I... Look. It's..."

"What?! Let's hurry up and loosen that tongue with some alcohol before it seizes up permanently."

"No. And I don't drink anything stronger than butterbeer, sorry."

She glared at him with dark eyes. He could withstand only a brief glance before looking away.

"Look," he said quietly to his scarred hands. "A long time ago, I swore to myself that I would never start a relationship with someone under false pretenses."

She stared at him. "Well, that's good then," she said.

"So if I ever noticed anyone who seemed, for some strange reason, to be developing an interest in me—"

"Don't give me that 'some strange reason' crap, Lupin. You're a damn interesting man. Of course people are going to develop an interest."

Lupin was silent for a while after that.

"I'm sorry," said Tonks. "You were about to reveal your innermost secrets and I went and interrupted you. Go on."

But he didn't go on for a while.

Tonks bit her tongue to stop herself from filling the silence.

"Well," he finally said. "The issue hasn't really come up before. I've never stayed in one place long enough for anyone to take notice of me. Since I left school, I've been moving every few months. No one has known me for very long, so all they've gotten of me has been a first impression, which as you've noticed isn't very good."

She carefully said nothing. The silence got longer, leaving her nothing to do but work it out. "You decided never to get into a relationship with someone who didn't know your secret, which is honorable of course, but you've never actually revealed your secret?"

"Well, yes."

"So you're a virgin?" she squealed. "You're a virgin and that isn't your deep dark secret, you've got another one besides? How old are you?"

"Thirty-three," he said.

"You're only thirty-three?" she asked, amazed. "Well of course, same as Sirius. I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No need to apologize, not for this at least," he said. "I'm a worn-out old man, and I look like it."

"No," she insisted. "The grey hair just makes you look—"

"I sure as hell don't look distinguished, so don't lie," he said. "Anyway, how old are you?"

"Twenty," she said.

"No," he said, shocked.

"Don't I look twenty?" she complained.

"You look exactly twenty, but you're a metamorphmagus. You can look however you want. I assumed that you chose this appearance on purpose. I mean, wouldn't most women choose to look like that if they had the option? Except for the hair," he added.

"This is my natural look," she said sullenly.

He looked doubtful.

"Except for the hair," she added. "I like my hair this way."

He shrugged. "It's your hair."

"Wait, back up. Why did you say most women would choose to look like me?"

"Well, they would, wouldn't they?"

"Why?"

"Well, you're beautiful, obviously."

"You think I'm beautiful?"

"I'm not blind. Anyone could see that you're beautiful."

"Are you attracted to me?"

"What would be the point of that? I'm too old for you, for one."

"What does that mean?"

"You've got your whole life ahead of you—"

"We're in the Order of the Phoenix, Lupin. Dumbledore told me the mortality rate when I joined. A one night stand might be exactly as long as a whole life romance for us."

Lupin has nothing to say to that. He grudgingly nodded.

"Besides," she continued breezily, "there's no need to compound the tragedy of our untimely deaths with the tragedy of you dying a virgin."

A burst of laughter escaped from Lupin without his permission. When he was able, he choked out, "Please don't trouble yourself on my account. That's been taken care of. Well, depending on how you define... No, let's say that chore has already been checked off the to-do list."

"But you said you'd never start a relationship without telling someone this deep dark secret of yours, and you never told anyone."

"I said I'd never start a relationship with someone who didn't know. Someone figured it out, and then miraculously didn't hold it against me."

Tonks bit her tongue, waiting for anything else he might say.

"It seemed impossible that such intelligent perception and such stupid tolerance could coexist in the same person," Lupin reflected.

Tonks's tongue was starting to hurt, the pause after this was so long. "What happened?" She finally said.

"It didn't work out," he said simply.

It seemed that no more details were forthcoming. As she pondered these new fragments of information, she broke out in a smile. Lupin flinched when he saw it.

"So," she said, smiling, "it is possible to figure your secret out despite you. And the prize for figuring it out is you."

"Oh Merlin. No. The prize, as you call it, is you running away screaming and never wanting to see me again. The prize is the end of any friendship there may be between us, for a start, and no doubt the end of our working relationship too. Figuring it out isn't the hard part. Still tolerating me afterwards is. Look," he added, without giving her anything to look at. "My sole loyalty is to the Order. You realize that."

She bit her tongue and nodded again.

"So I would never do anything to jeopardize our mission. I would never even do anything to distract from our mission."

"No one's asking you to, Lupin."

"You are," he said simply. "Order members need to be able to trust each other, to rely on each other on assignments."

She crossed her arms at him. "You're already making me suspicious of you and I don't even know why yet."

He nodded. "That's perfectly understandable. I'll tell Dumbledore to stop giving us assignments together. You need to be with someone you can trust, and I'll just do solo missions. I'm glad we had this chat." He pulled a half-eaten muggle chocolate bar out of his jacket pocket, unwrapped it, and offered it to her. "Would you like some?"

She glared at him, then broke off one square and chomped on it. It was warm and slightly melted from his body heat. It was good.

He broke off another square for himself and slowly ate it, closing his eyes and giving it his full attention.

"You're a chocoholic," she said dryly.

"What?"

"You're addicted to chocolate. That's your secret."

"Oh. Yes. I'm a chocoholic. That's it exactly. You've guessed my deep, dark, bitter secret. It feels good to finally come clean about his." He was smiling, but didn't meet her gaze. He offered it her another square. She declined, and he ate it himself. His hands, which had so confidently dueled the werewolf pack leader, were trembling.

They both jumped when they heard the doorbell ring. Tonks got up to look through the peephole as Lupin drew his wand.

"It's Dumbledore," said Tonks, opening the door to let him in.

"Dumbldore!" said Lupin almost giddily as he put away his wand. "So good to see you. Do you have another assignment for me?" he asked, with the eagerness of a puppy expecting a treat.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?" asked Dumbldore.

"No, nothing at all," said Lupin. "Sorry we didn't save you any pizza. Chocolate?" He offered.

"Thank you," said Dumbledore, breaking off a square and eating it. "Even muggle chocolate has a comforting magic to it, doesn't it? And you two may be in need of comfort. I have good news and bad news. Which should I tell first?"

"Good," said Tonks.

"Bad," said Lupin simultaneously.

Dumbledore sighed, and addressed Lupin. "As you may be aware, I have had a great deal of difficulty finding qualified staff to teach at Hogwarts. In particular, Defense Against the Dark Arts is a subject in which turnover has been very high. I'm afraid I've just lost another professor, and need to find a replacement."

"Lost?" asked Tonks. "What do you mean, lost?"

"He is unable to continue his work, as he now resides in St. Mungo's Mental Maladies ward," Dumbledore explained. "Forgive me for not considering you for the job earlier, Remus. I well remember how well-liked and effective you were as a tutor when you were a student. I'm certain the children will benefit from your teaching. Defense Against the Dark Arts is an essential subject, especially in these darkening days."

"But..." said Lupin helplessly.

"Of course, we have many details to work out, but I assure you that no problem is insurmountable. And you will find some familiar faces there. Poppy is still working in the hospital wing, and is as skilled at healing as ever."

"Madam Pomfrey? Well, that's good news," said Lupin.

"Minerva is still teaching transfiguration, and is head of Gryffindor House."

"Professor McGonogall? It will be hard to consider her a colleague rather than an authority. I'll always be afraid she's going to give me detention."

Dumbledore laughed. "We also have some new staff. Severus is now teaching Potions."

"Severus... You don't mean Snape!"

"I do. He's always excelled in that subject."

"But—"

"And he has my full confidence. Not only did I invite him to teach at Hogwarts, he also was one of the first people I tapped to rejoin the Order. I would trust him with my life."

Lupin took a deep breath.

"So that's both the good and bad news, isn't it?" said Tonks. "Lupin's getting a day job, which means he's leaving the Order so we won't be seeing him as much."

Dumbledore looked at Tonks. "I'm afraid his services are too essential for me to allow him to leave the Order, Tonks. He will have to do double duty." He turned back to Lupin. "As you know, you are indispensable for certain tasks, but I will try to impose upon your time as sparingly as possible.

"So what is the bad news?" asked Lupin.

"Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban," said Dumbledore.

Without a word, Lupin cracked his chocolate bar down the middle, handed half to Tonks, and started eating his half.

"I thought the news might hit you hard, so I came prepared," said Dumbledore, pulling a bar of Honeyduke's finest chocolate out of a pocket of his robes and handing it to Lupin, who accepted it dumbly.

After a few squares of chocolate, Lupin asked in a flat, dead voice, "Is he my next assignment? I'll kill him."

"No, that shouldn't be necessary," said Dumbledore. "The Ministry of Magic has made his recapture their top priority."

"It was their incompetence that allowed him to escape in the first place!" exclaimed Lupin.

"I have a related assignment for you, Remus," said Dumbledore. "We must consider the possibility that Sirius intends to finish the task he started. Azkaban guards report that he was heard muttering 'He's at Hogwarts,' and 'I'll kill him,' shortly before he escaped. Your job will be to protect Harry Potter. Young Harry will be entering his third year at Hogwarts. As you are the only survivor among Sirius's former friends, you're uniquely qualified to be on guard against him, for Harry's sake."

"Harry... I haven't seen him since he was a baby. Yes, Dumbledore, yes. I failed miserably at protecting his parents' lives, but I won't make the same mistakes this time."


	3. Chapter 3

3

Defense Against the Dark Arts

 **Author's note: I might not be able to create compelling characters like Rowling can, but by golly I know how to look at a calendar. I looked up the moon phases of 1993 to write this story, and discovered that they didn't match Rowling's story in Prisoner of Azkaban. For example, in our world, the full moon rose over Scotland at 6 pm on September 1, when Lupin either would have been on the dementor-delayed Hogwarts Express, or when he was supposed to be at the Welcoming Feast. From this, I'm assuming that moon phases are different in Rowling's world, and I'm trying to figure out what they were from the clues she gave us, although her lunar month doesn't even seem to be the same length as ours, which makes my Arithmancy job difficult. This is my roundabout way of warning my readers not to look too closely at a calendar when reading this story or, indeed, Rowling's.**

 **Speaking of inconsistencies, this is intended as a basically canon-compatible fic, but I've taken some liberties with a few scenes, so I guess it's a very slightly alternate universe.**

He had to prepare his syllabus and at least start outlining lesson plans for all seven grades, including O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. levels, which had to prepare students for the standardized tests. Notes from his predecessor would have been helpful, but a visit to St. Mungo's Mental Maladies ward in hopes of obtaining them was unsuccessful. His predecessor's predecessor was dead. In fact, Dumbledore couldn't provide contact information for anyone who'd taught Defense Against the Dark Arts for the last several decades, and advised Lupin that attempting to find out what had become of any of them would be a waste of his valuable time, considering how little time he had left. The school year would start September first.

Lupin got out his lunascope to check. Damn. September first was two days after the full moon. Well, it could be worse.

On the plus side, Dumbledore gave him an enormous advance for buying classroom supplies. Many required special permits from the Ministry of Magic for their purchase and shipping. Fortunately, Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, seemed quite willing, even eager, to care for the various dark creatures Lupin would be using for demonstrations, and was happy to sign for and receive them.

Detection of and defense against cursed objects, jinxes, hexes, curses, dark creatures... Why the three unforgivable curses are classified as such... The mathematical beauty, logic, and strategy of dueling could fill an entire course and then some, but he hoped to cover at least the basics...

If he kept himself busy enough, he had virtually no time to think about Sirius. Of course, if anyone was going to figure out how to escape from Azkaban, it had to be Sirius Black. Even as a child, his strength as a wizard had been obvious. It wasn't just his raw magical power, that had made Remus wonder if there really was something to this theory of pureblood supremacy, no matter how much Sirius scoffed at it. He had brilliant intelligence to match, which annoyingly gave him the ability to ace every test without studying. He'd instead spent his time playing pranks and watching girls fight over him. The creativity of him! The reckless audacity! The lies, oh the lies! He could get anyone to believe him at least once, and most, shockingly, believed him multiple times. He'd lied on Remus's behalf more times than he could count, getting him out of trouble, generally after having got him into it.

No. Remus had lots of preparations to make, and would not wallow in the past. How was he getting to Hogwarts?

He hadn't been to Hogsmeade for years, and so didn't feel comfortable apparating there, as he didn't trust his memory of the terrain. His fireplace wasn't hooked up to the floo network, but he could apparate to a public house with a networked fireplace, and then floo to the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, then walk to Hogwarts dragging his trunk, which he could lighten with spells, if he had enough magical power left... Or he could take the Knight Bus...

No. He'd take the Hogwarts Express. His memory of that bright red train was so happy, he could have used it to cast a patronus. He and his friends dragging their trunks in search of an empty compartment, Sirius and his little brother Regulus ditching each other as fast as they could, Sirius extravagantly buying candy from the cart for all his friends, waving aside all protests; "It's not my money, it's my family's. I don't deserve it any more than you do. No one ever gets what they deserve. Just eat candy while you can."

The present day came crashing back. James wouldn't be biting the heads off chocolate frogs, Peter wouldn't be sniffing suspiciously at his Every Flavour Beans, Lilly wouldn't be calling them pigs and telling them to clean up their candy wrappers. Even Regulus wouldn't be pretending he didn't know them. They were all dead.

Of the passengers laughing in that train compartment, only Lupin and Sirius had survived. And who else of his old class was still around? Severus fucking Snape, that greasy git. That was all the evidence needed to prove Sirius's point that no one gets what they deserve.

Deep breaths, Lupin. Sirius had hated Severus. You were wrong about Sirius, maybe you were wrong about Severus too.

It didn't take much magic to make the house he'd been using look derelict, an empty shell not worth looting. Some distraction spells were enough to repel any curious explorers, and if anyone did get in, or bulldoze this house as an eyesore, no loss, really. He was packed. He was ready for Hogwarts. He left his trunk by the front door, ready to go, feeling that same tingle of excitement he hadn't felt since he was a schoolboy.

One convenience of this house was the secure, windowless basement. He headed down there now. He locked the door behind him, with locks both mechanical and magical, _colloportus_ , and walked down the steep stairs. He reinforced the silencing spells he'd cast last month.

He wrinkled his nose at the smell. If the proper owners of this abandoned house ever returned, they'd conclude that a wild animal had broken in to this basement and used it as a den. They'd be right.

He put a water bottle, the cap slightly loose so it wouldn't take too much strength to open it, and a bar of chocolate, on the small table next to his cage. This month, he'd actually had money from his advance pay to buy a small bottle of dittany, so he placed that on the table too. Then he took off his clothes and put those on the table.

In the middle of the basement was an iron cage he'd fashioned out of a car he'd found abandoned in the yard. He'd used magical force to reshape the metal, but not transfiguration, as he'd been concerned his transfigurations might not hold if his magic faded. The cage was just big enough for him. He climbed in, and locked the door behind him with both key and magic. He was momentarily concerned that he saw rust on the bars, but was reassured when closer inspection revealed that the discoloration was just dried blood. He reached through the bars to carefully place the key and his wand next to the chocolate on the table.

Now there was nothing to do but wait. The trouble with leaving plenty of time was that now he was alone with his thoughts, which ran along their well-worn paths in his mind, as deep and permanent as his scars.

He looked down at his pale, slightly shivering body, which was a view he usually tried to avoid, but now there was nothing else to look at. A few of his scars were from the war, courtesy of various Death Eaters he'd fought. He remembered how he'd acquired each one of those. The rest of his scars, the majority, he didn't bother keeping track of. They just multiplied every month. He didn't look at them if he could avoid it, and he didn't subject anyone else to the sight of them either. Lupin closed his eyes.

 _Remus opened his eyes. He lay in his comfortable four-poster bed, stuffily enclosed by draperies in Gryffindor red, listening to whispers. Did his dorm mates imagine he couldn't hear them?_

" _Shh!"_

" _Be quiet!"_

" _He'll hear us!"_

" _No he won't!"_

" _I don't think this is a good idea."_

" _You're too nice."_

" _No, I'm just afraid he'll get back at us for this."_

 _Remus kept his breath steady, as if asleep, but such subterfuge seemed like overkill against these opponents._

 _He was ready when a dungbomb, fuse smoking, appeared in a gap between the draperies. He plucked it from the boy's fingers, swept the draperies aside, jumped from his bed, opened the window, flung the dungbomb out of Gryffindor tower to explode harmlessly on its way down, and slammed the window shut. "You'll have to try harder than that," he scoffed._

" _Good Godric!" said James._

" _Salazar's serpent!" said Sirius simultaneously._

 _James and Sirius looked at each other._

 _Peter ran to the bathroom and was noisily sick._

 _The dungbomb didn't smell that bad, did it?_

 _Then Remus realized. It was a warm September, and he'd slept in just his shorts. His new dorm mates could see his scars. Remus bolted back between the draperies of his bed and burrowed under the covers, listening to their tense breathing, smelling disgust._

" _What the hell happened to you?" said James._

 _He'd been so, so stupid. He shouldn't have slept like this, no matter how hot he was._

" _You look like you were attacked by a bloody crocodile," continued James. "I'm sure there's a good story there. Sirius, we'll really have to up our game here. Anyone who could survive that isn't going to be phased by a few pranks with dungbombs."_

" _It wasn't a crocodile," said Sirius. Remus hardly recognized his voice, as it didn't sound playful at all._

" _Dragon, you think?" guessed James. "Young dragon? What? Remus, you've got to tell us. I'm sure this is a story that would do Godric Gryffindor proud."_

" _You were close, with crocodile," said Remus, thinking fast as he reached an arm into his trunk to grab some clothes. "It was an alligator. My family went on holiday in Florida—"_

" _It wasn't an alligator," said Sirius, just as seriously as before. "Some of those scars look old, but some look fresh. This is ongoing."_

" _You've got a pet alligator?" said James. "Wicked! Doesn't seem like a really good idea, though, even I have to admit. Have you told Hagrid?"_

" _James, an alligator didn't do this!" insisted Sirius, sounding angry. "There's only one thing that could leave marks like that. His parents have been abusing him!"_

 _Remus's mind was chaotic. Was that a believable story? Did he want it believed? His parents loved him, and he them. Despite expert advice that they put him down years ago, they'd allowed him to live, and they often reminded him of that. He couldn't let anyone insult them._

" _You're out of your mind," said James. Maybe it wasn't a believable story after all. Remus had no idea what other kids' parents did. He'd never had friends before. "Parents would never do something Ike that," James said firmly._

" _But if they couldn't afford woundless whips, though?" insisted Sirius._

 _There was a pause after this. "What?" James finally said._

" _They're probably expensive," said Sirius. He hadn't been in school long, but he'd already learned that quite a lot of his possessions were what other kids called "expensive," which meant that other kids couldn't have them because of money or rather the lack thereof. Sirius was constantly amazed at how many items fell into this category. "But James, your family's well-off. So of course when your parents punish you, they use woundless whips, so you don't get scars like that, right? I mean. Leaving scars is abuse. Right? What? What? Why are you looking at me like that?"_

 _Remus was very tempted to peek between the draperies around his bed and spy on his dorm mates, but they seemed to have forgotten about him for now, which was how he liked it, so he stayed hidden._

" _Those are illegal," James said eventually. "Those are torture devices. Sadists use those to torture their victims, inflicting more pain that people could normally feel without passing out or dying."_

" _Well, yes," said Sirius. "Parents wouldn't kill their own kids, so of course they'd have to use something like that instead. If they could afford it. Do you think Remus's parents can't, that's why they have to inflict real injuries? Maybe we could buy them some better devices—"_

" _What the hell are you talking about, Sirius? Parents don't whip their kids." James sounded absolutely certain on this point._

" _Well, they shouldn't use real whips and things, of course not," said Sirius. "That would scar. But the magical ones that inflict pain without causing physical injuries— Peter, back me up on this!" Remus heard Peter cautiously coming out of the bathroom. "Injuries like that, like what we just saw on Remus, that's what it feels like when you're being punished with woundless whips and stuff, right? Except Remus's parents must be using real ones. They must not be able to afford the magical ones. His mum's a muggle, so maybe she can't even use the magical ones. Peter, tell James! He's acting like he doesn't have any parents."_

 _The room smelled like confusion, fear, and anger._

" _Um," said Peter. That apparently was all he had to say._

" _Your parents use magical torture devices on you," said James, as a statement, not question._

" _Well. I mean usually they have the house elves do it," said Sirius, sounding quite uncharacteristically awkward. "It doesn't scar. Look. No scars. So it's not abuse. Not like Remus. Can we get back to talking about Remus already?"_

" _We're talking about you right now," said James._

 _Remus allowed himself to breathe._

" _Sirius, this isn't normal. It's not right," said James._

" _Well what are parents supposed to do when their kids are bad?" demanded Sirius, sounding furious._

" _My mom talks to me," said James. "She says she's disappointed in my behavior, but she knows I can do better. And my dad takes away my broom sometimes."_

" _I used to get spanked," volunteered Peter. "Not anymore though, 'cause now I don't get caught. James is right, Sirius. Your family's just weird."_

" _But... Well of course, you're good kids. I deserve it. I'm a bad kid. I'm evil," insisted Sirius._

 _Peter laughed. "You're not evil. You're eleven!"_

 _James spoke with absolute certainty. "This is wrong. We need to tell a professor, McGonagall or Dumbledore. They'll fix this. Let's go."_

" _What? No!" said Sirius. "You can't."_

" _We're going," said James. "Come on Peter. Are you coming with us, Sirius?"_

" _But you don't understand about my family," protested Sirius, "They're very powerful," but their voices were fading as they left._

 _Sirius could make anything about himself. He was wonderful. Remus might as well not exist. Remus finished getting dressed and crept out of bed unnoticed._

As his memories beat their usual tracks through his mind, the moon was pulling on Lupin's bones. He could feel it through the basement walls, through the earth, moving inexorably up to the horizon. He felt it appear in the sky, sending one thin beam of its malevolent light, which shattered every bone in his body, twisted his flesh, reforming him into the wolf as his human screams of agony turned to howls.

He tried to run, stretch his powerful wolf legs, run in the glorious moonlight, but he slammed into iron bars. On all sides, above, below, slam, slam, slam, he was trapped. He wanted to hunt, to eat human flesh, drink human blood, to bite and bite and bite, but he was trapped. He howled in frustration. He slammed against the bars again and again. If only he could take a running leap, build up some momentum, he'd be able to hit the bars really hard and possibly break them, but his cage was so small, he had no room to maneuver. He tried to gnaw through the iron bars, but infuriatingly, they were spaced so he couldn't really bite them properly.

He howled, then pricked his ears, listening desperately for answering howls, but heard nothing through the silencing spells enveloping the basement. He howled again and again, but received no answer. His pack was gone. He was alone.

He paused to scratch his ear with his hind leg, too hard. His claws were sharp. The smell of blood, even his own, maddened him. Blood, blood, he must have blood. He bit his front leg in frustration, and the sensations of pain and flowing blood filled his mind. He gnawed. It wasn't human blood, but had some similarities. It would have to do.

When the moon finally slipped below the horizon, the wolf howled in agony as his bones all shattered and his flesh twisted. His howls turned into hoarse human screams, then silence.

Damn, his right arm again. Lupin reached his shaky left arm through the bars for his wand and cast _Vulnera Sanentur_ , left-handed and with his scream-ravaged throat, on his right arm until the deep bite marks were closed enough that he could use a wand and key with his right hand again. _Allohomora_ and the key unlocked his cage. He crawled out, and cast _Episkey_ and other healing spells on his assorted claw marks, tooth marks, and bruises until he was rid of some of his pain and all of his power, and his wand felt like just a dead stick in his hand.

His shaking right hand put down his wand and reached for the chocolate bar, and water for his sore throat. He'd completely forgotten about the dittany. Well, once his hands were steady enough that he could trust himself not to spill it, he'd heal himself with that too. Time for a break now, then more healing spells when he had the energy for them. He'd take most care with his face and hands, as he had to at least look presentable by tomorrow, for tomorrow morning, he would once again board the Hogwarts Express.

—-

He arrived early enough to find an empty compartment. He had been foolish to think of enjoying the ride. His friends were not there, and wouldn't be sharing exaggerated tales of their summer adventures. He didn't need Sirius to buy him overpriced candy from the cart. He could buy his own damn chocolate now, and had come prepared with Honeyduke's finest in his pocket. Well, at least he could enjoy a nap, which he sorely needed. He closed his eyes.

 _Sirius's grey eyes searched platform 9 and 3/4 until they locked with his. "Remus, are you all right?"_

" _I'm fine," Remus said automatically._

" _You're not fine, you've had another one of your episodes. I'm not letting you drag your own trunk, don't be ridiculous. Wait here, I'll go get a compartment for us." Sirius loped into the train, long black hair rippling behind him like a pirate flag. He was back soon. "I found one. It just had a few first-years in it, and they were easily removed." He patted his wand in its sheath and gave a mischievous grin. "Now only this wand can unlock it. It's all ours." Then he levitated Remus's trunk, and his own, herding them into the compartment he'd reserved. Showoff. Remus trudged behind him. Sirius himself looked rather thin and pale, Remus thought. Well, if he'd been ill over the summer, he'd apparently recovered, as he was blazing with his usual energy._

" _Keep an eye out for James and Peter," Sirius said. Remus obediently looked out the window. He felt Sirius's gaze on the back of his head. Remus didn't feel he had the strength for Sirius's intensity right now. He'd lost a lot of blood recently, and just wanted a nap._

" _I did a lot of reading over the summer," said Sirius, in an excited tone that didn't seem justified by his words._

 _Remus turned to look at him. He'd done a lot of reading too, he always did, but knew that Sirius didn't want to hear about that. Sirius wanted him to say, "What did you read?" so he did. He was surprised when Sirius didn't immediately answer, then figured out his plan._

" _You're building suspense on purpose," Remus complained. "Just tell me."_

 _Sirius smiled with his expensive, perfect teeth. "I spent most of the summer locked in the basement," he began._

" _What?" shouted Remus._

 _Sirius looked annoyed. "My parents wanted me to swear an unbreakable vow that I'd ask to be transferred to Slytherin before they'd let me out, but that's not the point of the story."_

" _Good Godric, Sirius—"_

" _That isn't the interesting part of the story."_

" _But—"_

" _Forget I mentioned it. It wasn't bad. They wanted me to be stuck in absolute darkness, but Regulus snuck a light down, and books, and much more food and water than my parents had planned to give me. It was fine."_

" _That is not 'fine,' Sirius," said Remus. "That's abuse. If muggle parents did that they'd lose custody of their—"_

" _That's not the bloody point, Remus!" said Sirius. "The point is I've been doing a lot of reading. My parents have lots of books on all sorts of dark magic. I've learned a lot."_

" _Oh," said Remus. "So are you going to be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year? I know last year's professor won't be back after—"_

 _Sirius's barking laugh ricocheted around the small compartment. Remus often wished that Sirius had a volume control, like his muggle mother's radio._

" _Now that is an interesting idea," said Sirius. "The power to give Snivelus detentions!" He seemed to be considering Remus's joke in earnest, and dismissed it only after a struggle. "No, only a madman would accept a job with a curse like that on it."_

 _Sirius had set that one up. "You have that qualification."_

 _Sirius's barking laugh rampaged around the compartment again. Remus's hands twitched to cover his ears, but he stopped them. It felt good to be with a friend again, particularly a friend like Sirius, and he wasn't going to mess things up by telling Sirius his laugh was too loud. In Sirius's presence, Remus was unimportant. He was just Sirius's minion, not an individual with his own problems to worry about, and that was just how he liked it._

" _I'm overqualified," said Sirius. "But that's not the point."_

" _Then get to the point already," said Remus. "Unless you're planning to milk this one story for the entire trip."_

" _I read a book on dark creatures," said Sirius. He was looking at Remus expectantly as if expecting him to know what this was leading to._

 _Remus looked out the window for James and Peter._

" _I figured out why you get so ill every month. You're a werewolf!"_

 _Remus felt the world crashing down around him. He'd been found out. He'd no longer be tolerated in Hogwarts. His parents had been right. There was no place for him in human society._

 _A chill crept over him, a terrible, bone-aching chill, along with despair that said there was no point even bothering to shiver. He'd never be warm again. He'd never be happy again._

 _Sirius grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around so they were face to face. He smelled like excitement and Sleekeazy's hair potion. Sirius's grey eyes, very close to his, were full of a mania Remus had seen only on their most daring and dangerous pranks. "That is so fucking cool! I've been sharing a dorm with an actual werewolf! A real live dark creature! I'm so glad the hat sorted me into Gryffindor so I could be with you."_

 _Remus had apparently lost the ability to comprehend the English language. "What?"_

 _Sirius was suddenly awkward, as Remus had never seen him. "I don't mean that's the only reason I like you," he said. "We were friends before. I already knew you were amazing, I just hadn't realized quite how amazing. Why didn't you tell us?"_

And just like that, one of his worst memories flowed seamlessly into one of his best memories. Why, then, did he still feel this bone-chilling despair?

Lupin opened his eyes, which made no difference, as the train compartment was in absolute darkness. What it lacked in light, it made up in noise, as rather a lot of children's voices merged into a cacophony of panic and confusion.

"Quiet," he said, and there was silence. This boded well for his teaching career.

A _Lumos_ charm wouldn't be ideal here, as he might need to use his wand for something else quickly, so he cast a small, cool, self-sustaining fire and held it in his left hand. His night vision was better than humans', so keeping the light dim put him at an advantage against human opponents, in case they were the problem here. They usually were.

"Stay where you are," he said to the children. He planned to see if anyone n the corridor knew what was happening, but before he even reached the door, it opened. Who the hell let a dementor onto a train full of children?

Surely it would go away once it realized Sirius wasn't here. Wouldn't it? Instead, with a great sucking gasp—

 _Remus suddenly heard a knock on his bedroom window. First he froze, then put down his book and went to investigate. He couldn't open the shade because the bars were in the way, but if he poked a quill through the bars, he could move the edge of the shade just a touch. He often snuck glances outside, although he knew his father would be upset if he found out. Outside were fields, trees, and, in the distance, a few other houses._

 _This time, peeking through the window, his eyes couldn't focus, until he suddenly realized he was trying to focus too far away. Standing right outside the window was a boy! Remus's age, eight or thereabouts, staring at him with shocked blue eyes that matched the sky behind him. "There is a kid in here!" he said triumphantly. "I knew it! Come out and play! I'm so glad you moved here, it's really boring and there's hardly anyone else here. My name's—"_

" _Obliviate!" Remus heard his father say, and the boy's face suddenly went blank. Through the narrow gap of the shade, Remus saw his father turn the boy around and point him towards a house, towards which he shambled._

" _We didn't hide you well enough. We'll have to move again. I'll protect you, Remus, don't worry. No one will ever know I have a werewolf for a son!"_

Wow, the dementor had dredged really deep for that memory. Maybe the children on the train had reminded him. Dimly, Lupin was aware that one of the children in the compartment had fainted. Get a grip, Lupin, he told himself in Sirius's laughing voice. He stepped over the boy on the floor.

"None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks," he told the dementor. "Go."

Th dementor drifted closer to the child on the floor.

 _Sirius Black, hiding with him under James's invisibility cloak, trying not to laugh—_

" _Expecto patronum_!" said Lupin, brandishing his wand at the dementor attacking James. A silver wolf leaped from his wand to attack the dementor. Damnit, no, he didn't need a full corporeal patronus, a vague silver mist would do, so he scaled back, hoping no one had noticed his patronus's form. The dementor fled.

The train compartment had gained some new occupants as he slept. A ginger-haired girl and a fair chubby boy looked pale and queasy in their seats. On the floor, a ginger-haired, big-nosed boy who reminded him of the Prewett brothers, and a bushy-haired girl he didn't recognize, were staring at James, who had collapsed. No, of course it wasn't James, James was dead, and James hadn't had a scar on his forehead like that.

As Professor Lupin distributed chocolate to his students, he realized that if he carried out his plan to kill Sirius, or even to betray Sirius's secret to Dumbledore, he'd never be able to cast the patronus charm again. It would be worth it of course. Right?


	4. Chapter 4

4

Bravery

He got to the Shrieking Shack in plenty of time. Now there was nothing to do but wait. And remember. Damn.

" _Werewolves are dangerous only to humans, right?" said Sirius, with the air of one expecting agreement._

" _Well," said Remus. He really didn't like to disagree with his friends on anything, but he couldn't let that stand. "Werewolves can spread lycanthropy only to humans, by biting them, and they have an insatiable, single-minded urge to hunt and bite humans. They're no more dangerous than ordinary wolves to other creatures, but that's still dangerous. Because, you know, they're wolves. Predators and all that. And, well, I'm dangerous even to inanimate objects, and myself. You've seen my injuries after my transformations. You should see the Shrieking Shack. It was furnished when I first started using it for my transformations, and now the furniture is all broken and gnawed."_

" _They're wolves," said Peter._

 _Sirius shot an annoyed look at Peter. "Yes, Peter. Glad you're following along."_

" _Wolves live in packs," Peter continued. "They have a social structure. You can't have just one wolf by itself or it'll go crazy."_

 _Sirius, James, and Remus stared at Peter. Finally, James broke the silence. "Are you volunteering to let Remus bite you, so you two can be werewolves together and he won't be lonely?"_

" _No!" said Peter, sounding panicked. "God no. My mum would kill me if I were a werewolf. All I'm saying is, Remus, I don't think that destroying stuff and biting yourself is really part of your werewolf nature. That's just your reaction to being locked in a house by yourself."_

 _The Marauders mulled that over._

" _That actually ties in with what I was thinking," said Sirius. "We obviously can't hang out with Remus on the full moon when we're human."_

" _When are we not human?" asked James. "Aside from Remus of course."_

" _Of course we've only ever been human so far, but we don't have to be. We're wizards! We can become animagi! Look at Professor McGonagall. She can be a cat."_

" _You want to hang out with Remus when he's a wolf?" asked James._

" _So he won't be lonely!" said Peter victoriously. He didn't always follow along with Sirius's plans, but he was proud to have managed it this time._

" _Well yes, of course, that too," said Sirius. "And think of the pranks we could play on people when we have a real live werewolf in our gang! Safe to us, dangerous to everyone else!"_

 _Sirius's maniacally grinning face searched the room for the correct reaction, which was an enthusiastic cheer, but didn't find it._

" _No," said James eventually. Thank Merlin someone said it so Remus didn't have to. "You can't use Remus for pranking people. I don't know what you're planning, but whatever it is, I'm sure someone could get hurt. Remus could get caught. Remus could get in real trouble, maybe even expelled."_

 _James didn't quite understand what "real trouble" was, but Remus was grateful for his support anyway._

 _Sirius walked over to Remus, sat by him, and put his head slightly too close in that way he had, so that his pleading grey eyes took up a lot of Remus's field of vision. "You recognize a brilliant idea when you hear it, right?"_

" _No, not the puppy dog eyes!" laughed Peter. "Anything but the puppy dog eyes! Look away, Remus. He's using his dark magic on you, you know he is. He's got me into so much trouble doing that."_

 _Sirius was staring at Remus eagerly. He smelled excited, hungry, under the spicy perfume of the expensive toiletries his parents sent him from home._

" _What's your plan?" Remus heard his own voice say._

 _Sirius grasped him by both shoulders, and Remus suddenly had the odd feeling Sirius was about to kiss him. He didn't, though, just stretched his maniacal grin even wider. "I knew I could count on you. You're a brave man, Remus. Sorry, a brave werewolf. Well, a brave Marauder, anyway."_

" _I didn't say I was agreeing—"_

" _Here's the plan," said Sirius. "Step one: James, Peter and I become animagi."_

 _Peter laughed. "That's it, I'm out. Only the most powerful wizards can learn to become animagi, and not even all of them. You know I'm not very good at transfiguration."_

" _We'll help you!" said Sirius._

" _This isn't like doing my homework for me!" said Peter. "This is real magic!"_

" _You'll do fine," said Sirius, waving an elegant hand dismissively. "There are books on how to do this. They're in the restricted section of the library, so Remus will use James's invisibility cloak to sneak in and get them. It has to be Remus obviously because he's the best at research, so he'll know which books to get. Remus, James, and I will read the books, and explain things to Peter as necessary."_

" _What's step two?" asked Remus._

" _We'll never even get to step two," said James. "Step one is already impossible for underage wizards, and illegal."_

" _Think, James," said Sirius. "It must be possible, or the Ministry would never have bothered to ban it."_

" _They banned underage wizards from trying because it's so dangerous," said James. "We could wind up part-human, part-animal, or stuck in our animal forms forever, or have animal instincts take over our minds and drive us insane..." He drifted off, considering. "Yeah, it does sound fun. I'm in. Good idea, Sirius. I'll get my invisibility cloak."_

 _That was how Remus found himself sneaking through the restricted section of the library, hiding books under James's invisibility cloak. Human transfiguration was certainly an interesting subject, intriguing in its own right, even if they never got to step two. Sirius hadn't actually told them step two yet._

The moon was pulling on his bones. He could feel it through the floor of the Shrieking Shack, through the earth, moving inexorably up to the horizon. He felt it appear in the sky, sending one thin beam of its malevolent light, which shattered every bone in his body, twisted his flesh, reforming him into the wolf as his human screams of agony turned to howls.

Lupin stopped howling. He just stood there on his four feet, panting. Lupin looked down at his front paws, which was a very strange sensation to someone used to having hands. He could see them perfectly well, despite the fact that he knew the room to be dark. His fur was grey. In fact, everything looked grey, even things he knew to be other colors.

He tried to take a step, and fell. He had no idea of how to walk on four legs. He'd never had his own mind during the full moon before. He had his own mind!

He had the whole night ahead of him. What would he do? He should have brought a book to pass the time. No, his paws probably weren't very good at turning pages. He didn't even know how to walk on them. He supposed he could practice that. He tried that for a bit. He couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the subject.

It was night. He felt a thrill when he realized what he could do. He could sleep! He could actually sleep, and not have to try to heal his injuries in a haze of sleep deprivation and pain in the morning. No, even better, Madam Pomfrey would come back at moonset to patch him up as she'd done when he was a boy, so he wouldn't have to heal himself at all. No, wait. He might not even have injuries in the morning! He wasn't biting and scratching himself as usual. Good Godric.

He looked around at the fragments of furniture that littered the Shrieking Shack, broken and gnawed by his teenaged wolf self, enraged over the lack of humans to bite. Now, rather than feel an urge to bite and claw innocent furniture to shreds, he felt only an urge to do some major cleaning up.

He sniffed at the air, and detected a faint hint of human. Madam Pomfrey, smelling clean, had left a very faint trace of herself as she'd dropped him off. It was always such a comfort to smell her coming back in the morning to patch him up. He briefly tried to contemplate biting her, but the thought was so abhorrent he shuddered. He thought about what that meant.

He wasn't dangerous! His heart pounded. As long as he had the wolfsbane potion, he'd no longer live in fear of biting an innocent person. It was safe for him to be near humans. Rather than a terrible curse, he now suffered an inconvenience.

His heart welled with gratitude for Damocles, the inventor of wolfsbane potion, and overflowed with gratitude for Severus Snape, who'd brewed it for him. "I'm sorry for ever thinking ill of you, Severus," he thought. "You are a good man. I will forever be in your debt."

With these happy thoughts in mind, he curled up on the floor to sleep. For future transformations, he'd even be able to enjoy such comforts as a bed to sleep on! He wouldn't shred it in fury.

He slept, right until the moon set, when he was awakened by the agony of his bones all shattering, his wolfish flesh deforming, reshaping into a man. He lay on the floor, panting. He looked himself over. He was uninjured. Weak and shaky from his transformation, yes, and tired, as he hadn't slept well, but Madam Pomfrey would have little to do.

—-

When he resumed teaching, virtually all his students, every class, every grade, turned in homework he hadn't assigned. Lupin really hadn't been planning on grading this enormous stack of essays, considering he was already behind on writing his lesson plans. Snape assigning homework that Lupin would have to grade must have been Snape's idea of a joke. Ah well, Lupin's gang has certainly played more than their share of pranks on Snape in their youth, so this must be payback. Only fair, really.

That muggle-born girl, Granger, top in her class, hung back after the third-year class was over, homework essay scroll clutched in her hand. "Professor Lupin?" she asked, with uncharacteristic timidity.

"Yes, Miss Granger? What can I do for you?"

"Will we get Professor Snape as a substitute again?"

"Yes, you likely will, Miss Granger. He very kindly agreed to teach my classes when I'm not well."

"Are you often unwell, Professor Lupin? We were all very worried about you. You know what they say about your job, that no one lasts in it more than a year, so when you took ill—"

"Miss Granger. My health is not your concern. I'm extremely grateful that Headmaster Dumbledore hired me despite my condition, and I am also extremely grateful to Professor Snape, who has agreed to fill in for me as necessary."

"He assigned this essay," she said, waving it. "To everyone. Sir, how can you be grateful to him?"

"Well, that was his little joke," said Lupin, forcing a laugh. "I'll have to grade them all, which adds quite a lot to my workload. But I know that you're not afraid of homework, Miss Granger," he said, trying to sound cheerful about grading the awful pile.

She looked shocked at that. "It was horrible for him to assign such a thing. I know what he was trying to do to you."

"Now, Professor Snape and I may have different homework policies, but I won't tolerate anyone speaking ill of him," Lupin said sternly.

"But he's after your job, Professor Lupin!" she said. "That's what they say, that he really wanted the Dark Arts job, but Professor Dumbledore wouldn't give it to him, so Professor Snape jinxed it so the teachers never last more than a year. You have to be on guard against him. You've only been here a month and he's trying to get rid of you already. I'm worried about you, Professor Lupin. You're the best Defense teacher we've had. I had to warn you, sir. I don't want anything bad to happen to you." Her brown eyes were shining at him.

Damn. This called for drastic action. Lupin laughed coldly. "First of all, if there is a jinx on this position, it was already in place before Professor Snape and I entered school as students, for our Defense professors lasted no longer than yours. Professor Snape is completely innocent of the dark magic of which you are accusing him. I will not tolerate slander of any of my colleagues, particularly Professor Snape, who has my utmost respect. Secondly, your grades are fine, Miss Granger. There is no need to flatter me in the hopes of pushing your grades any higher."

The poor child's eyes got wide. "No, I didn't mean it like—"

"You're in Slytherin, right? That was a rather obvious attempt at manipulative flattery, which rendered it quite ineffective, but I'm sure that some of the more advanced students in your house will be able to tutor you in subtlety if this is a skill you're interested in developing."

"Professor Lupin!"

Lupin was glad to see that her sorrow over her dear professor's poor health and workload seemed to be completely gone. Good. Caring about people only doomed one to a life of pain. He couldn't protect her from everything, but he could at least spare her any pain on account of him. He would be merely a competent teacher to her, not a person worth caring about. Of course, he also had his selfish motivation to drive her away so she'd be less likely to discover his secret.

The only problem with his plan was that her sorrow seemed to have been replaced with rage. The coiled springs of her hair seemed to be shooting from her head, pressurized by the furious thoughts ricocheting around her brain. Lupin wondered if he'd have time to put up a shield spell before she hexed him.

"I am not in Slytherin! I am in Gryffindor!" she shouted, much more loudly than necessary. She looked at the scroll in her fist. "And you're right, I'm sorry sir, at first I didn't understand what you were getting at, but you're absolutely right. I am in Gryffindor, and I'd damn well better start acting like it. Some things are more important than grades!" She tried to rip her scroll, but it was too tough when rolled up, which made her gesture less impressive. She unrolled it and ripped it in half. "Give me zero on this essay, Professor Lupin." Rip. "I shouldn't have written it in the first place." Rip. She looked at the shreds. "Silly me, I've been doing this like a muggle." She drew her wand and Lupin dived behind his desk. " _Incendio_!" he heard her cry. He peeked back up to see Hermione's proud, fierce face illuminated by the flames of her burning homework.

"I stand corrected," said Lupin quietly. "You are definitely a Gryffindor."

He wouldn't have believed it possible, but her expression got even prouder.

Well, that was a complete failure. Might as well go for broke. Very quietly, with the difficulty of one who was not accustomed to revealing personal details, he said, "I was a Gryffindor too."

Miss Granger laughed. "Was, sir? I'm sure you still are."

"I'm sure you have a class to get to," he said, managing a weak smile. "Don't let me keep you."

The young witch nodded, turned her blazing smile to the door, and charged away.

Gryffindor was the house of bravery. He was certainly brave, right? He wasn't avoiding anything frightening, was he? He was in the Order of the Phoenix, risking his life for the right side! Then why did he feel like he was no longer a real Gryffindor?

He gathered the pile of essays and walked back to his office. What would Godric Gryffindor think of him? Would the Sorting Hat come to the same conclusion now, twenty-two years later? Some dusty part of his brain formed a plan to sneak into Dumbledore's office to try the Hat on and check, but the plan required borrowing James's invisibility cloak, and was absurd in general, so he discarded it. He wasn't a teenaged Gryffindor, at least.

There were simpler ways to figure this out. What was he afraid of, and did he face his fears or let them control him? Well, boggarts looked like the full moon to him, and he faced that every month, but it would be cheating to credit himself with any bravery for that, as he had no choice.

Dark creatures, cursed objects, malevolent spells... These were things that made most wizards shake in fear, but which were his job. He had no fear of them at all, just a wary respect. Wasn't that bravery? No, he knew damn well it wasn't. Cooks weren't brave for working with fire and knives, they were just doing their jobs, as he was.

What was he truly afraid of, and did he face it or run away?

Greyback had said, "Ah, now I smell fear," and of course, the sight of those flames licking closer to Tonks had been quite terrifying. That had been his only moment of fear during the duel, when he'd realized he'd chosen a spell so badly. There were other flashy spells he could have used to get his point across equally well, but he'd chosen one that had put bystanders in danger, which had been a terrible mistake.

He already knew that about himself, that he was terribly afraid of hurting innocent people. That's why he put so many redundant safeguards between his wolfish self and the world. That was a good fear, really, not one he should overcome.

Was he afraid of anything else? When had he last trembled in fear?

When he realized, he knew what he had to do, although his hand was shaking too hard to hold a quill. He wrote the note anyway. He'd copy it more neatly later.

Dear Tonks,

I have not forgotten the kindness and generosity you showed me when I was in need, and now that I am gainfully employed and my situation is more stable, I can take some steps towards returning the favor. I would like to buy you lunch in Hogsmeade this Saturday, or on a different weekend if that works better for you. Please reply by this owl. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Remus Lupin

His third attempt was legible enough, although it didn't give the best impression of his handwriting, which was usually quite neat. With a giddy recklessness he recognized from his youth, he declared it good enough, rolled and sealed the parchment, and was just about to address the outside when he realized he didn't know her given name. Would "Tonks" be sufficient? He didn't want his note getting to some random relative of hers instead. He supposed he'd have to ask Dumbledore. Or maybe he shouldn't bother him. Maybe he should just burn his note as he had burned his first two drafts—

No. He was a Gryffindor. He was brave. He'd ask Dumbledore her name. Bothering the headmaster over a personal matter like this was frightening, but he faced his fears.

Lupin headed to Dumbledore's office, but saw Snape stalking through the halls on the way. At first, Lupin felt his habitual contempt for the git, but quickly reminded himself that this was the man who had freed him from his curse by brewing the wolfsbane potion for him. His scorn was replaced with a rush of gratitude. And Dumbledore trusts Snape, he reminded himself. Therefore, he is trustworthy. He's even in the Order of the Phoenix, just like I am. Snape was a good man, and it was time for Lupin to change his attitude towards him.

Here was a perfect opportunity to let Snape know that they were now on friendly terms. "Severus!" Lupin called cheerfully. "May I have a moment of your time?"

Snape regarded him suspiciously, his black eyes glaring from behind his curtains of greasy black hair. "You are already taking much more than a moment of my time," he said. "Your presence here has greatly increased my workload, as I now have to teach extra classes and brew an extremely time-consuming potion every month." He swept into his office, trying to slam the door behind him, but Lupin held it open and followed him in. Various pickled creatures stared at him with unblinking eyes from the jars that lined the walls.

"I'm well aware of that," said Lupin, "and I'm extremely grateful for your help. Allow me to express my sincerest thanks—"

"And now you're imposing further upon my time," continued Snape. "Do you, perhaps, consider my entire life to be yours, to dispose of as you wish? Well do I remember that you nearly killed me—"

"Severus— Yes, let's clear the air over this. That was a long time ago, and we need to find a way to put it behind us. We were children. We both made terrible mistakes back then. Mine was that I ever trusted Sirius Black. It was he who engineered the prank that nearly took your life." I'm not going to mention that you were equally idiotic, falling for his prank, trying to sneak into the Shrieking Shack in the first place. "You also made mistakes during that time. If Dumbledore believes that you are now a changed man—" Lupin stopped. That was the wrong tack, so he corrected himself. "If I believe you are a changed man, if I trust you, I hope you can find enough forgiveness in your heart to grant me the same—"

"The difference, of course," drawled Snape, "is that while I am a changed man, you are not a man at all. You are an animal. If you must interact with me at all, you should be groveling at my feet in gratitude that I allow you to stay here, rather than turning you in to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

"That's an empty threat," said Lupin, proud of how level his voice was. "You know Dumbledore wouldn't allow that."

"I have work to do, Lupin," said Snape. His baseline level of irritation seemed to be rising to actual anger. "We don't all get an extra holiday every month."

Lupin took a deep breath. "Then I will get straight to the point," he said. "Do you know the given name of a young Auror who has recently joined the Order? She goes by her last name, Tonks, but I need her full name so I can address a letter to her."

"Dumbledore invited you into the Order? You?"

There was probably a limit to how many deep breaths one could take before being in danger of hyperventilating. Maybe it was time to switch stress-management techniques. Lupin mentally replayed James's account of how Snape had been so terrified that night, he'd wet himself. Composure restored, Professor Lupin patiently explained to the slow student in front of him, "Yes. Dumbledore trusts me enough to invite me into the Order, just as he trusts you, and Tonks. We're all on the same side. We all work together."

"Nymphadora," said Snape, clearly in a desperate after o get rid of him. "Her given name is Nymphadora."

"Really?"

"Don't you trust me?" Snape asked coldly. "You were just going on about how we're all on the same side."

"Of course I trust you, Severus," said Lupin after a pause. He got out his quill and wrote "Nymphadora" on the note, in front of "Tonks." "I'm off to the owlery." He almost left, but paused. He wasn't just a Gryffindor, he was a Marauder. He turned back around to Severus and gave him a friendly smile. "Oh, and just one more thing, mate. You've lived here a lot longer than I have. Which restaurant in Hogsmeade do you recommend for a casual date?"

"What?"

Lupin's smile could pass for camaraderie, right? Or did it look too much like a gloating grin? "You know," he said, grinning, "when you go to Hogsmeade for a date with a special someone, where do you go?"

Snape appeared to have lost the power of speech. Lupin marveled that there was someone in the world with a personal life more pathetic than his own.

"Well, I'm sure we'll find something," said Lupin cheerfully. "I won't take up any more of your time. Thank you again for everything you've done for me. I really mean that." He gave Snape a friendly pat on the shoulder. Snape looked at his shoulder in horror. Lupin could almost hear Sirius, James and Peter laughing as he turned and headed for the door of Snape's office.

Laughter burst from him without permission just before he'd made his escape. Why had Sirius always called him, Remus, the best liar of all the Marauders? He couldn't even keep a straight face for one joke! This called for some quick thinking.

He spun to face Snape again, so he was laughing right in his face, making no effort to suppress it. "Sorry, I only just got your joke, and it was a good one. I'm awfully out of practice with teasing banter," he said. "All my friends who used to tease me are dead, or insane, or in one case has been unavailable in Azkaban for twelve years. You must be similarly out of practice, as didn't quite a lot of your friends go to Azkaban at around the same time? So neither of us have had anyone to tease, yet here you came up with this playful nickname for me, 'Animal.' Thanks, that was great. You can call me Animal, and I'll call you, I know, Vegetable! We'll find another friend to be Mineral. We'll walk around the grounds on a beautiful day, arms slung over each others' shoulders companionably, and everyone will call out 'What a charade!' when they see us coming."

Snape's reaction to this was most gratifying. "I was not addressing you as a friend," he said coldly.

After pausing just long enough, Lupin widened his eyes. "So... You were flirting with me? Severus, don't you think that could be dangerous? Tonks seems like the jealous type, so if she caught you trying to steal me away from her—"

"Get out of my office."

"Of course, it all makes sense now," continued Lupin. "You seemed so obsessed with me back in school. You even tried to follow me into the Shrieking Shack. You must have heard that I'm naked for my transformations, and couldn't resist a peek—"

"Get out. Now."

"Oh Severus, I was such a fool, I never realized that your rough exterior was there only to protect your tender heart, aching with unrequited love, too shy to act on your desires. What would your Slytherin friends have thought had they known you loved a Gryffindor—"

A bolt of pure hatred seemed to shoot from Snape's shadowed black eyes, and Lupin slammed against the shelves behind him as if he'd been punched. He felt a glass jar shatter behind his head, and something with an acrid smell dripped itchily down his neck. As he pulled away from the broken jar, shards of glass and pickled eyeballs splashed to the floor around his feet. He reached for his wand instinctively, but noticed that Snape's hands were empty, so he stopped. Snape had attacked him with nonverbal, wandless magic, which was very advanced, or...

Accidental magic, like a child. With a look at Snape's face, he knew which it was. Snape, the cold and sarcastic, had finally lost control.

"Thank you again for your time," said Lupin quietly. "And please do call me Animal again. I will respond to such friendliness in kind." He left, closed the door behind him, and only then drew his wand, to remove the drips of potion and shards of glass from himself. He hadn't needed his wand at all to win that duel.

After the owlery, from which Lupin watched his heart soar into the sky and disappear, he headed back to his own office. He had little time for gloating. He had to get started on this mountain of grading.

He unfurled a scroll and read the title. "How to Identify and Kill Werewolves."

When his heart started beating again, he started unscrolling the others. All of them, all classes in all seven years of students, "How to Identify and Kill Werewolves." And at least one student, Granger, a third-year, had figured out what he was just from that.

Severus Snape, he marveled, as he ate a few fortifying squares of chocolate. Were you afraid to lose our old animosity? I need lessons from you in how to stop people from liking me. You are a true artist. But why go to the trouble? Why do you need to push people away? What secrets must you be hiding?


	5. Chapter 5

Humanity

Lupin, who had always excelled at dueling, struck first. "So, tell me about yourself."

Tonks took a swig of her butterbeer and shrugged. "What do you want to know?" she parried.

"Well. We could start with really basic things. You're a recent graduate."

She nodded.

"Which house were you in? I was in Gryffindor," he volunteered. "And you?"

"Guess," she said. Her dark eyes twinkled merrily at him.

"Do I look like— Well, I suppose I do look rather like the Sorting Hat," reflected Lupin, looking down at his faded old clothes. He supposed he should buy some more professional-looking robes, now that he was a professor, but his new job that enabled him to afford new clothes also kept him too busy to shop for them. He'd always just tried to avoid thinking about how he looked, as he had far too many scars to have any hope of being proud of his appearance.

Tonks laughed a loud, coarse laugh, like a bark. He'd scored a direct hit. "How would you sort me, Hat?" she asked.

"I hardly know you, really," said Lupin. "And I'm not a legilimens. You have to give me some information to work with."

"You know me well enough to have asked me out," she said.

"All right. You said yes, so you are most definitely brave, so I'll say you're a Gryffindor, like me."

"Nope. Guess again," she said merrily.

That threw him. "What? Well... You're an Auror. I know they have a very strict set of academic requirements, so you must be extremely intelligent and studious to have even been admitted to their training program. So Ravenclaw."

"Nope. Guess again," she said, smiling.

"You're enjoying seeing me squirm when I guess wrong," he said. "So Slytherin."

She laughed. "Yes I am, but not Slytherin."

"I know!" he said victoriously, as she laughed again. "You didn't attend Hogwarts at all. Beauxbatons? Your English is perfect, though."

Tonks snorted butterbeer out of her nose, and was laughing too hard to speak for quite a while after that. She finally choked out, "I've got to stop you before you guess anything even more ridiculous or I'm going to die laughing," she attempted to parry.

"Durmstrang? Now that you mention it, I can really see you in one of those fur uniforms," he added, twisting the blade in the wound.

"Stop! Stop! I'm a Hufflepuff, you fool!"

His blank stare negated any advantage he may have gained in the duel up to this point. "Hufflepuff?" he said weakly.

"Of course, Hufflepuff," she said. "You know the traits of the four houses."

"Well..."

"Describe them," she challenged.

"Um. Well, Gryffindor is for the brave and bold, Ravenclaw for the witty and wise, Slytherin for the cunning and ambitious, and Hufflepuff is for, well, everyone else."

"Yes!" she said proudly, although it really hadn't occurred to him before that this could be a source of pride. Of course, magical children who lacked the traits required by the other houses had to go somewhere... Well, no, being sorted into one house didn't mean you lacked the traits of the other houses. He was in Gryffindor, not Ravenclaw, although the Sorting Hat has told him that he had plenty of intelligence for Ravenclaw. It had also said he had more bravery than intelligence, so into Gryffindor he went. At least, that's what the hat had told him after he'd told it he wanted to be in Gryffindor, with those boys he'd met on the train. So what did Tonks have more of than her bravery, her intelligence, or her ambition?

"I'm afraid I know very little about Hufflepuff," he admitted.

"But you said it," she said. "You know it. Hufflepuff is for everyone else. Hufflepuff accepts all, in true loyal friendship and fairness, without prejudice or judgement. Are you all right? Lupin? Remus? Hello? Anyone in there?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking."

"What?"

"That perhaps I should have asked the Sorting Hat to put me in Hufflepuff. Perhaps I would have been happier there. I hadn't realized what I'd been missing until you explained. Maybe the only reason I wound up in Gryffindor... Well, these boys on the train let me sit with them, and James said he knew he was going be sorted into Gryffindor because his whole family was, and Sirius said he was going to tell the hat to put him in Gryffindor just to annoy his parents, and Peter said he wanted to be in Gryffindor too, although maybe that was just because Sirius had bought everyone candy by that point, and I, well, I felt that we could be friends if we were in the same house. I wanted friends. I went along with them. I went along with them on a lot of things, really, some of which I'm not proud of. Hufflepuff doesn't have many bullies in it, does it?"

Tonks shook her head. "Were you bullied in Gryffindor?" she asked sadly.

"No," said Lupin darkly. "Worse. I was part of the gang of Gryffindor bullies. We called ourselves the Marauders. It was bully or be bullied, so I sided with the bullies. I wasn't as bad as Sirius and James (although I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, in James's case) but I didn't do nearly enough to stop them, and I even helped them with many of the trickier pranks we played on people. At least one kid we bullied has never forgiven me. You know him. Severus Snape."

Tonks laughed, surprisingly. "I'll admit that Snape's personality presents a challenge to even the most tolerant Hufflepuff," she said. "What a git."

"I'm at least partly at fault for how he turned out," admitted Lupin. "I treated him terribly." Strangely, admitting these sins to a friendly ear somehow felt good, unlike turning them over and over in his mind as he usually did. How much did he dare share? "We nearly killed Snape once. Literally. I had nothing to do with the planning of that one, that was all Sirius, and James put a stop to it, but Snape blamed all of us."

Tonks's dark eyes were wide. "Merlin... Thank you for telling me." She put a comforting hand on his.

Lupin considered that if he had a heart attack right now, that would be a pretty good way to go. "In retrospect, it all seems so obvious," he continued. "I'm an idiot to have missed it. James and Peter thwarted Sirius's plan to murder Snape, and then just a few years later, Sirius had James killed, and murdered Peter himself. My best friend had obviously been capable of murder since he was sixteen and I didn't do anything to stop him. I was more concerned about covering up for him and saving him from detentions or loss of house points than reporting him to the Aurors for attempted murder and sending him to Azkaban where he belonged. How many of the deaths in the Order were his fault? The Prewett brothers, Caradoc, most of the Bones family, poor Benjy, Marlene and her whole family, James and Lily, Peter... so many good people, dead. We were losing the war, badly. How many of those deaths are my fault, for not realizing that Sirius was a spy? We knew there must have been a traitor among us, someone must have been leaking informing to the Death Eaters, but I couldn't even consider the possibility that it was him. I'd had all the information I needed since I was sixteen but didn't act on it."

"That is a dark secret," she said. "I understand, Lupin. You were just a kid when you met him, and you're not a seer. You fell in with a bad crowd, and didn't know any better. I can tell you've changed. Don't let guilt over your past hold you back."

"Oh, I don't," said Lupin. "I mean, it is annoying to have to work with Snape, who is a git in general, and also has an understandable grudge against me, but other than that, the past is the past. It's gone. I try not to dwell on it."

"But... Your secret. You've told me your dark secret, the one you couldn't tell anyone—"

Now it was Lupin's turn to snort butterbeer out his nose. When he was capable of speech again, he managed to choke out, "That? You think that's bad enough to count as a dark secret?" He had to stop to laugh some more. "No. No no no, that's an entertaining anecdote about some childish pranks. No. That's not it. But thank you for listening to that one, I've never told that one to anyone either, and it does feel good to get it off my chest."

She gave him the hairy eyeball. "How many secrets do you have exactly?"

"Arithmancy was never my strongest subject," he said.

"Well," she said, looking at him determinedly. "This looks like a job for a Hufflepuff. I am determined to get through all these layers of secrets, and understand and accept every last one of them or die trying."

"Don't say that," said Lupin, chilled.

"I mean it," said Tonks. She put her hand on his cheek, and he felt his grey stubble rasp against her skin. He'd just shaved that morning, but it grew fast. "You deserve to be accepted for who you are. Every human being does."

She thought he was human. Of course she did, she would never have agreed to a date if she didn't. He didn't really have to tell her. They could continue like this. He had a job. He could have a girlfriend. He could have a life.

Lupin called for the bill, and felt absurdly proud to pay it with money he'd earned. It was real money. Why did he have the nagging suspicion that it was counterfeit? Everything he was doing was counterfeit.

"Thank you for lunch," she said as they strolled out of the restaurant.

"Thank you for your company. Sorry to burden you with these old stories."

"Quit apologizing. Where to next? Honeyduke's? How's your chocolate supply holding up?"

"The school actually has a huge stock, because of all the dementors. I'm all set. I'll buy some for you, though, if you'd like. Let me buy some for you."

She shrugged. "It's my turn to buy next, and I'm not particularly into chocolate. Let's just stroll around. I haven't been to Hogsmeade since I graduated. I know! Let's go to the Shrieking Shack! It's supposed to be terribly haunted, but I've never seen a ghost there."

"Actually, I should be getting back. I have rather a lot of grading to do."

"You're scared of the Shrieking Shack! Are you a Gryffindor or not? I know! I dare you to go to the Shrieking Shack! That's got to work. Gryffindors are really easy to manipulate, they'll do anything on a dare. 'It's so dark and scary up there in the Astronomy tower, I dare you to do my Astronomy homework!' and they'd actually do it."

"Are you sure you're not a Slytherin?"

"My mum is. Nearly my whole family, really, except for the muggle side. The hat did offer, but I didn't want to spend my school years with people who look down on half-bloods. Anyway, the Shrieking Shack's that way."

"I know, but I really do need to get back. Aside from all the grading, I'm getting behind on my lesson plans."

"Chicken! Bok bok bok."

"I don't think your animagus transformation quite worked. Chickens don't have pink hair."

"It's OK to be scared of ghosts, Lupin. I'll hold you. That's the whole point of the Shrieking Shack, don't you know? So teenagers can leap into each other's arms in fright."

He hadn't realized that his agonized screams and howls had been the background music for any youthful romances. He found the idea disturbing. His walk back to Hogwarts sped up.

Tonks kept pace with him, lengthening her legs to match his stride. "It's a good thing you have an Auror to escort you back. It's dangerous with Sirius Black on the loose."

He caught her as she tripped on her long legs. "I appreciate your protection," he said as he set her back on her feet and let go of her as quickly as possible. "But I'm actually pretty good at defending myself. Constant vigilance, as Moody says. You'd only distract me."

"I've never seen the inside of the professors' quarters at Hogwarts. Are they nice?"

"Tonks. Please. I have grading to do. I wouldn't dream of interfering with your work, so please grant me the same consideration."

"You know Remus, many men think that if they buy a woman a meal, she owes them a kiss."

"Really? What cads. I hope you meet a better class of men in the future." He strode off as fast as his long legs would carry him, leaving her clumsy legs behind.

Counterfeit. Fake. Liar. Dark creature. There was no way this could possibly work. He was being cruel to both of them with this false hope.

Still, he'd gone on an actual date. She clearly liked him, at least the man she thought he was. Could his memory of this date power a patronus? Would it be an adequate substitute for Sirius's friendship, his acceptance? As Lupin approached the dementors guarding Hogwarts, he tried it. What bad memory would they dredge up this time?

 _His father was yelling at Dumbledore, perfectly audibly despite the fact that he'd banished Remus to his room. "I demand that you cease this cruelty at once! Remus will never have a normal life. Don't get his hopes up. Even if you somehow contrive a way for him to attend Hogwarts, what will happen to him after those seven years, eh? Giving him a taste of a life he can never have will just leave him worse off."_

Tonks's smile, her laugh, the touch of her hand on his. " _Expecto Patronum_!" No. Definitely not. Despair cling to him even as he walked past the dementors.

—-

"Potential child abuse case," said Mad-Eye, tossing the parchment to her.

"Oh no." Tonks read the file. Neighbors reported that a little girl who used to be seen frequently playing around the neighborhood was now rarely seen, and no longer played with her friends. Screams had been heard from her house last night.

The report came with a portkey in the form of a popsicle stick. Tonks and Mad-Eye grabbed it. After the unpleasant yanking sensation, they found themselves on a tree-lined street of modest houses, many with toys scattered in the yards.

A small horde of children rampaged past, chasing a dragon-shaped balloon that was shooting backwards as it snorted fire. The children laughed as the flames tickled their faces.

The ones in the lead continued their pursuit determinedly, but the stragglers stopped to stare at the two Aurors who'd just materialized.

"You have pink hair!" said a little girl, pointing.

Tonks wondered if Mad-Eye had picked her as a protege so children would have someone else to point at. She squatted down to get on the girl's level. "I do? Really?" she asked.

The little girl nodded solemnly.

"It's supposed to be green!" said Tonks. "Could you please change it back to green for me?"

The little girl's eyes were huge.

"I'll teach you how," said Tonks. "Can you wiggle your fingers like this?"

The child managed a reasonable approximation.

"And can you say 'een-gray air-hay'?"

She could.

"Now do them both together."

"Een-gray air-hay EEEEK!" The little girl looked back and forth between Tonks's green hair and her own fingers in amazement.

"Thank you!" said Tonks. "And I have another favor to ask. Do you know Clara?"

"She's my friend. But she won't play with me anymore."

"Why not?"

"Her mum and dad say she's ill."

"Which house is hers?" The little girl pointed. "Thank you again." Tonks walked to the front porch, where Mad-Eye was already waiting.

"Scan shows two adult-sized humans, no one smaller. I've already blocked the back door and windows, with spells that'll slow them down at least and alert us if they try to escape."

Tonks nodded and rang the doorbell. Just as she was wondering if they'd have to break the door down, it was opened by a tired-looking woman in a spotted apron. She started when she saw them. "Can I help you?"

Tonks smiled. "Mrs. Enid Rouch?"

She nodded.

"Good morning. I'm Auror Tonks, and this is Auror Moody. We got some calls saying that Clara hasn't been seen recently, so we're just checking that she's OK."

"She's not here," said the woman, very nervously. "She's at her grandma's."

"We just want to have a little look around," said Tonks, still smiling.

"No. The house is in no state for company."

"We have a warrant," said Mad-Eye, brandishing it as he impatiently elbowed his way past her. She didn't seem interested in reading it, so he put it away, drew his wand, and did some more scanning spells. His blue eye was whirling. "Who else is here?"

"My husband. He's in his workshop. He does broom repair and customizing."

"Get him. He's the only other person here?"

"Yes. Richard! I hate to interrupt, but, Aurors are here."

"Then who is that?" demanded Mad-Eye, pointing at, or probably through, a blank wall. With a wave of his wand, the weak disillusionment spell was broken and a door appeared. Another wave of his wand opened it. Then he spun to point his wand at the man who'd just walked up behind them. "Don't move," he said.

Tonks entered the hidden room.

"You have green hair!" said a faint, high voice.

Tonks knelt by the small bed, where a little girl was lying. She looked pale, except for a prominent purple bruise on her cheek, and one of her arms was bandaged.

"I do? Really?" Tonks responded automatically. She drew her wand, out of the girl's sight. Mad-Eye's scan had revealed only two humans.

The little girl nodded solemnly.

"It's supposed to be pink!" said Tonks. She did a silent scan for dark creatures. The display from the scan, visible only to Tonks, was almost blinding. Werewolf.

Tonks stood and returned to the couple, still held at wand-point by Mad-Eye.

"We you aware you were sheltering a werewolf?" Tonks asked. And in a neighborhood full of children! She was so furious, it was hard to keep her voice steady.

"No!" wailed Mrs. Rouch. "No! It was just a dog bite, it must have been, and we didn't report it because we didn't want the dog to be harmed—"

"Sheltering an unregistered werewolf is illegal—"

"So now that they know, they're not doing it anymore," interrupted Mad-Eye. "Last night was a full moon, and it must have been her first transformation. Right?" He waited for the parents to nod. "So there's no need to add insult to injury by arresting parents who just lost their daughter."

Damn it. Mad-Eye was right. "I'm sorry for your loss," said Tonks, and she really was. Tears were welling in her eyes, which didn't seem professional, but damnit, she was still a human being even when she was in uniform.

"You're sorry!" choked the woman. "You're taking her away and you say you're sorry—"

"The werewolf that bit her is the one that took her away," said Tonks sadly. "Your daughter died the night she was bitten. This isn't your daughter. This is a monster that's taken her place."

The woman wailed, but through her cries she admitted, "I know, I know, she's gone!"

Professionalism be damned, Tonks hugged the weeping woman, who collapsed in her arms, shaking with sobs. "I know she's gone," she cried. "My little girl is gone."

Tonks still had to do her job. "So, are we going to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures for the Werewolf Registration today? We can pick up the forms you'll need to get written permission from all your neighbors to house a werewolf." She pulled back a little to see the woman shaking her head.

"Mummy?" came a weak voice from the bed. "I dropped Toad. I want to hold Toad in case he's scared."

Tonks looked, and saw a plush toy toad on the floor by the bed. She drew her wand and pointed it at the toy. " _Portus_ ," she said quietly. Then she handed it to the werewolf. "Here you go dear," she said, making her voice sound cheerful as if the werewolf had her convinced she was talking to a human child. "What a cute toad."

The werewolf reached out a hand and took it. "Thank—" but the portkey activated and she was gone before she could finish the phrase.

"If you like, I could have the Werewolf Research Institute contact you later about collecting the remains for a funeral," said Tonks.

"No," said the woman. "No." Tonks made a note of that and left the parents to their grief.

She heard the man's angry voice as they left. "I told you we should have let her go with Greyback when he offered to take her off our hands!"

"But..." the voices faded into the distance as they walked away.

"Where do you want to go for lunch?" asked Mad-Eye.

"We haven't had Indian for a while," said Tonks.

They chose a restaurant and apparated there. Mad-Eye chose a table in back and sat facing a corner, from which he could survey the door and the whole restaurant by swiveling his eye to look through the back of his own head. He soon scanned their food for poisons and discretely cast some silencing spells around their table.

"I just don't understand," complained Tonks, stirring her aloo gobi listlessly.

"Me neither," said Mad-Eye. "All right, I guess the _Cruciatus_ curse isn't really necessary when we have veritaserum, but how is the _Imperus_ curse any worse than _Obliviate_? I don't see why one should be classified as an Unforgivable but not the other. If the Ministry would just loosen up on their restrictions—"

That old argument. "No, that wasn't what I was talking about. I meant Lupin. You know him, right? From the war?"

Mad-Eye thought for moment, then said, "Oh, Remus Lupin! Haven't thought about him for years. Lost track of him after the war. I told him he'd make a damn good Auror, said I'd put in a good word for him, but he didn't seem interested. Why?"

"Is he gay or something?"

Mad-Eye smirked. "He never made a pass at me."

Tonks laughed harder than she intended. "Well, if he can resist your charms then he can't be gay."

"I didn't know him well enough to know anything about his personal life," said Mad-Eye. "He certainly didn't have an obvious girlfriend or boyfriend." He paused to reflect. "If he had, they never would have tolerated him going on all those dangerous missions. He took jobs I was afraid of. We didn't know how he survived them. Why bring him up now?" He took a bite of his tandoori chicken.

"Dumbledore invited him back into the Order."

Mad-Eye nodded. "Good. He's brave. Smart. Damn good dueler."

"Cute," added Tonks.

"I didn't notice," said Mad-Eye. "So what don't you understand?"

"I'm just not used to men saying no to me," Tonks grumbled.

Mad-Eye actually fixed both his eyes on her, which she found unnerving. There was a long pause before he spoke. "This is outside our official mentor-protege relationship, but do you want advice?"

Tonks nodded.

"Lupin must be a very cautious man," he said. "The fact that he's still alive proves that. Constant vigilance: he does it nearly as well as me. He's not going to rush into anything. Gradually get to know each other, and maybe he'll eventually trust you."

"But we can't get to know each other when we never even see each other," she complained. "He's teaching at Hogwarts now, and whatever else he's doing for Dumbledore is just solo missions."

"Hogwarts is surrounded by dementors these days, guarding against Black, but Dumbledore isn't letting them on the grounds for obvious reasons. There are a few extra Aurors stationed in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. Let's see if we can get you assigned there so you can spend some time with your boyfriend. Damn, don't smile at me like that, you're blinding," he grumbled. He rotated his blue eye to point to the door behind him again, so she saw just its smooth white back.


	6. Chapter 6

A faint whiff of dungbombs, the yowl of an angry cat, and the patter of running feet combined to form a time-turner that transported Lupin back two decades. He abandoned the grading on his desk and opened his office door just in time to see the Weasley twins running by. " _Impedimenta_." Turquoise light shot from his wand and stopped both twins in their tracks. He grabbed one twin in each hand and yanked them into his office, closing the door behind them before those quietly running cat feet turned the corner. "Sit down, Messrs Weasley," he said, but they were still clumsy from the impediment jinx. "Relax," he added, pushing their awkward forms into a couple of chairs.

Over their panting, he just barely heard those graceful cat feet run past his office door.

"Professor, we can explain," said one of them, probably Fred.

"Quiet. Minnie might double back," he whispered. That silenced them, except for the panting of their lungs and the pounding of their hearts. He listened at the door for a bit longer, then returned to his seat behind his desk. "I'm glad I happened to run into you two. I've been meaning to have a talk with you about your homework, or rather your lack thereof. I know that you've been very busy recently—"

The twins exchanged a look of barely-suppressed panic.

"—studying for your OWLs," continued Lupin without skipping a beat. "This curriculum is challenging, particularly since I have noticed widespread lack of preparation among my students. I'm afraid that your previous Defense teachers may not have adequately prepared you for this year's coursework. There's a lot of catching up to do, which might seem overwhelming. But I want to emphasize that I have designed my lessons and homework assignments with practical, real-world applications in mind."

He had their attention, or at least they were staring at him as they caught their breath. He paused his professorial speech to look at them. "You must be tired of being told how closely you resemble your uncles, Fabian and Gideon."

The twins looked at each other.

"Not really," said maybe-Fred.

"Mum mentioned it once," said maybe-George.

"Really? The resemblance is so striking, I'd have thought that anyone who knew them..." Of course, so many of the people who'd been closest to Fabian and Gideon were dead. If anyone was going to tell these boys tales of their uncles' exploits, it would have to be him. "Those two were quite a team. I remember Gideon using that very jinx, _impedimenta_ , to slow down a Death Eater enough for Fabian to hit him with a well-aimed entrail-expelling curse. The latter is a rather advanced curse I won't be covering, but the former should be well within your abilities even at your age if you apply yourselves. You would do well to honor your uncles' memories by cultivating as much of an interest in defense as they did, or more. Of course, I hope you never need to use such skills." Lupin briefly allowed his eyes to close. It had taken an ambush by five Death Eaters to take down the Prewett brothers.

He opened his eyes. Four identical brown eyes were staring at him. "I want you to know that I really mean it when I say I want you to succeed. If you need any help, please ask questions in class, or come to my office hours. As you didn't turn in last week's homework on jinxes, perhaps you need extra tutoring on this subject?"

Their knowledge was more extensive than he'd feared, a seemingly random assortment of things from both below and above their grade level. They learned quickly when they set their minds to it, and he made quick progress patching the holes in their knowledge.

He shouldn't let his enthusiasm for the subject, and the increasing enthusiasm of his students, make him lose track of time, for tonight was the full moon.

"I'm sure I've taken enough of your time," he said. "Please come to my office hours again. Shall we make an appointment now?"

"Tomorrow?" asked maybe-Fred.

"How about Tuesday?" suggested Lupin. "Four o'clock?"

"Sure!" said maybe-George. "Thank you."

"I'll write a note to remind you," he said. He jotted down "Tutoring, Lupin's office, 4:00 Tuesday," and handed it to them.

Maybe-Fred stared at the paper once he took it.

"That time does work for you, right?" Lupin asked.

"Sure, it's fine," said maybe-Fred. He showed the note to maybe-George, who gasped. The two of them locked eyes, and Lupin got the impression of information passing quickly between them.

"What?" asked Lupin.

"It's just, your handwriting…"

Lupin let out a self-deprecating laugh. "I know it's bad, but it's not all that bad, is it? It's a vestige of a childhood spent writing with ballpoint pens. My mother was a muggle, and we mostly lived amongst muggles, so I've got handwriting like a muggleborn. My parents assumed I'd never need to write with a quill, so I never properly learned how to use one. I could learn if I wanted I suppose, but it's never been a high priority."

The boys gasped. "They thought you were a squib? You? You're the best Defense professor we've had!"

"Now you're damning me with faint praise. Get out of my office if you're going to insult me," he smiled.

They laughed as they got up.

"Oh, and dungbombs are so generic," Lupin added. "Catnip really shows Minnie you're thinking of her."

When he opened his office door to let the twins out, he was shocked to see Tonks lurking in the hallway.

"Tonks!" exclaimed maybe-Fred.

"What are you doing back?" asked maybe-George.

"Fred! George! How you've grown!" she said, looking at each in turn. "You're not ickle firsties anymore. I'm scared to think of what pranks you might be pulling now. I'm not going to help you with any today, boys, sorry," she smiled.

"Pranks?"

"What do you mean?"

"We never do any pranks."

"Time for a different conversational subject. What are you doing here?"

"I heard Hogwarts finally got a decent Defense professor just a few years after I graduated, so I figured I'd reenroll."

"Good choice," said Fred.

"They let you do that? Since if they do, maybe we'll just skip most of this now and instead go to school later, when we're retired and have time," said George.

"Or at least after Snape has retired."

"And Binns had been exorcised."

She laughed. "That would be nice, unless their replacements are even worse. Actually boys, I'm here on business. I'm an Auror now, you know."

"Really?" asked maybe-Fred, looking at her uniform.

"I thought you were on your way to a fancy dress party."

"Isn't that the Sexy Auror costume from Party City?"

"I like this one much better than the Sexy Dementor costume."

"I'm glad you didn't go for the Sexy Vampire costume. That really sucked."

"Now the Sexy Werewolf costume—"

"Ew," interrupted Tonks. "Sorry boys, you wouldn't know this of course, but I had a rather bad experience with werewolves a few months ago, and don't want to hear the words 'sexy' and 'werewolf' in the same sentence."

"Oh yeah, we heard, the Aurors are really cracking down on werewolves now."

"Not so much recently I'm afraid, with Sirius Black still at large," she said sadly. "This manhunt's taking a lot of resources. Hopefully we'll catch him soon and things can go back to normal. You two are keeping an eye out, right? I know you go sneaking around Hogwarts at all hours."

"Tonks!"

"There's a professor standing right here!"

"Sorry, is someone talking to me? I can't hear a thing," said Lupin. "I think a nargle flew into my ear."

"What's a nargle?" asked Tonks, the first thing she'd said to him directly.

"I have no idea," he said. "But one of my second-year students is always going on about them."

Tonks tried to suppress a smile and continued. "MLE has decided to station some of us in and around Hogwarts, to be on the lookout for Sirius Black. It's not a laughing matter, boys."

"So you decided the door to my office was in particular need of guarding," said Lupin. "Thought this was his most likely haunt, did you?"

"What?"

"Go on, boys," Lupin urged the twins. "I'm sure you have homework to do." The twins scrammed, leaving the two of them alone in the hall.

"Are you here to arrest me?" Lupin asked. "Snape is convinced I'm the one who let Black in. You too, now?"

"What? No!"

"Criminal's former best friend starts job in heavily-guarded school, criminal somehow breaks into school shortly thereafter. It makes sense, really. Snape's trying to convince anyone who will listen."

"I never listened to Snape even when he was giving safety instructions in class. I'm not going to start now."

"So what are you doing here?"

"Like I said, I'm stationed here. Actually I just got off duty. So, you know. I just thought I'd stop by to say hi."

"Oh." The silence lengthened. "Hi."

"You're looking well," she said.

"I think the Hogwarts elves are trying to fatten me up," he said. "I'm sure I've gained weight since they've been feeding me."

"It looks good on you," she said.

"You should see me in my Sexy Werewolf costume from Party City."

Her barking laughter echoed down the hall. "That's your secret for infiltrating Greyback's pack!" she finally choked out.

"That's why I'm a professor, because I have all this knowledge for defeating dark creatures. It's simply a matter of the correct party supplies."

She laughed. "I've missed your jokes. Did you get my owls?"

"Yes. I'm sorry I didn't have time to reply, but this job is keeping me very busy."

"I understand."

"I'm sure you're busy as well. I don't mean to keep you, after a long shift on guard duty."

"And I have to be back early tomorrow. It's pretty late. Maybe I'll sleep here."

She wasn't expecting him to offer crash space in his quarters, was she? The moon wouldn't be up for a couple of hours, but she'd certainly notice his absence, tonight and in the morning. And he still had to take his final dose of wolfsbane for the month. He could feel the wolf stirring in him, getting restless, hoping to break free. He had to get to Snape's office.

She sensed his awkwardness and laughed. "You know about that guest room on the seventh floor, right? I could just stay there. No one else ever seems to use it, at least they didn't when I was here. Charlie and I discovered it when we were students."

Try as he might, he couldn't remember any guest room on the seventh floor. "Are you sure? My friends and I explored this castle very thoroughly as children, and I thought we'd found just about everything. Peter was particularly brilliant at finding every hidden passageway."

"It's in the left corridor," she said. "Across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls to dance ballet."

He searched his memory. "I recall the tapestry, but... Show me. Now you've got my interest. I can't believe we missed a whole room."

She led the way. There was the tapestry, but there was just a blank wall across from it. She paced back and forth. "It was here, I swear it was! It was very nice, and private, no one ever found us... Here it is!" And indeed, there was a door where Lupin could have sworn no door had been before. "Told you so," she gloated, opening the door and pulling him in.

It was indeed a cozy guest room, nicely furnished with a grand bed, two nightstands, and a loveseat. There were no windows, but candles illuminated the room softly. A door in back led to a bathroom.

"I see we didn't discover all of Hogwarts's secrets," Lupin admitted. Something about her story bothered him. "So who's Charlie?"

She gave him a triumphant grin he didn't understand. "Charlie Weasley. Older brother to those twins. He was in my year, but a Gryffindor. You'd have gotten along great. He had no fear of dangerous beasts. What? I just meant you're both Gryffindors, both brave. Maybe I've got a thing for Gryffindors. Are you jealous?"

"What happened?" Lupin asked.

She shrugged. "It didn't work out."

His voice broke as he said, "I'm sorry."

She gave him a blank stare, then said, "Oh! I've got to remember that when you say something didn't work out for you, you're talking about betrayals and tragic deaths and whatnot. No, Charlie just got a job offer at a dragon sanctuary in Romania when he graduated, so we kind of drifted apart. He was always more interested in dragons than in girls anyway. We were never really serious. It's fine. What? What's wrong?"

Lupin's tongue felt clumsy, unable even to express his confusion. It was past time to say goodnight and head to Snape's office, then to the Shrieking Shack. "I just can't imagine loving someone enough to," he waved a hand vaguely at the bed, "and then just letting it end."

"I never said I loved him," said Tonks, who seemed just as confused as he was.

They stared at each other in mutual confusion for a while, then Tonks finally broke the silence. "Remus, you don't have to be so damn serious all the time! You're allowed to have a bit of fun. Like this." And just like that, she was kissing him.

He felt as if someone had hit him with some sort of stunning spell, as the shock spread from her lips to his, to the rest of his body. Oh Merlin, the impossible softness of her lips, her quiet gasps as he grabbed her body and pressed her to him, her taste, her scent, some floral chemical mixed with the unmistakable scent of a woman, a human, an addictive scent. He couldn't get enough of her, he wanted to breathe her, eat her, rend her flesh with his fangs and lap at the blood— He shoved her away. At least he'd shoved her into something soft, as she fell on the bed. This wasn't surprising, as it took up most of the room.

"Remus!" she gasped. "I thought I'd have to teach you about kissing, but you're doing fine. Come on, I want some more of that."

He had to remember how to talk. "Severus," he said. "Snape."

"Why the hell are you bringing up that git?" she asked, furious. "You sure know how to ruin the mood."

"Potion," he choked out. "I need a potion."

"Oh!" she said with a delighted smile. "I didn't know you were ready. That's very responsible of you, but I can't believe you were going to talk to Snape about this." She pulled a small pink vial out of her pocket, broke the seal, uncorked it, releasing a cloying vanilla scent with a touch of bitterness humans probably couldn't detect, and drank it. "No worries! Now there's no chance of me getting pregnant tonight."

There was no chance he'd remember how to talk under these conditions. He bolted from the room and ran down all the stairs to Snape's dungeon office. He heard the patter of Tonks's small combat boots behind him, then a thud and some swearing as she tripped and fell. He didn't slow down.

Snape was waiting for him, holding a goblet. "Cutting things close, aren't you?" he said as he handed it over.

Lupin grabbed the goblet and took a gulp. It was very difficult to choke down at the best of times, and even harder while panting. He concentrated on getting down one sip at a time. It would defeat the whole purpose if he threw it up. The wolf in him recognized it as poison, not the delicious meat that had been in his grasp moments ago.

"If you're going to impose upon my time by making me brew this potion, the least you can do is show up punctually to actually drink it," complained Snape. "Believe me, I would be just as happy to skip this chore, and let you rip yourself to shreds every month, even if I did have to teach more of your classes during your recovery. Your students deserve a qualified teacher, meaning, as the barest minimum qualification, a human."

Someone banged on the door of Snape's office. "Remus? Are you in there? I need to talk to you."

Lupin choked down the last drop of potion and thudded the goblet down on the desk. "I don't suppose there's a back door out of your office? Or a window?" he pleaded.

Snape shook his head, a slight smile twisting his lips. Of course there were no windows in the dungeons.

Lupin steeled himself, opened the door, and charged past Tonks. He hadn't hit her, but she fell over anyway.

"Remus! What the hell—"

He was up the hall and running up the stairs two at a time already. He heard Tonks ask Snape, "Where is he going?"

He heard Snape reply, "The Whomping Willow, I believe."

Lupin skidded to a stop, clinging to the banister. He turned to face Snape. "You wouldn't," he said pathetically.

"I know not to go near the Whomping Willow!" said Tonks. "I'm not an idiot," but man and werewolf ignored her and continued their conversation around her.

"You're a better man than Sirius, aren't you?" Lupin pleaded.

"Of course I am, Lupin," said Snape. "This young lady asked a question, so I answered her. That's what polite people do."

"That's what Sirius did," said Lupin. "You called it attempted murder when he did it."

"I asked Sirius a slightly different question," said Snape to Lupin. "This young lady didn't ask me how to get past the Whomping Willow to see what it's guarding," continued Snape, smiling. "So there's no way she could find out."

Tonks turned to Snape. "What?"

Lupin felt the moon pulling at his bones. He had no time. He resumed his sprint, out of the castle, across the great lawn, to the Willow. He hit the knothole with a well-aimed rock to stop the branches from whomping, and ducked into the entrance to the tunnel under the roots. Then he lit his wand to light the tunnel and, hunched over, sprinted the mile or so to Hogsmeade, coming up through the basement of the Shrieking Shack. He locked the door behind him. Can't collapse yet, got to undress and stash clothes and wand where they won't get destroyed by the wolf— No, the potion should make him harmless, if it worked, if he'd drunk it in time... He stashed his stuff safely out of the wolf's reach anyway.

He'd done it. He'd drunk the potion, and could still taste it. He was here before moonrise, so even if the potion didn't have time to take full effect, he was no danger to others. He could stop panicking. The nightmarish vision of himself ripping strips of tasty flesh off of Tonks's sweet body could stop now. It really could.

He was thankful for the agony of transformation driving all thoughts from his mind.


	7. Chapter 7

7 First Try

Remus wasn't in the Defense classroom the next day. Instead, Snape was acting as substitute teacher, which no one seemed happy about. Tonks strode right past on her rounds, looking for Sirius Black. Lupin wasn't in his office either. A note on the door apologized that he wouldn't be available for his usual office hours.

She finally spotted him creeping towards the teachers' quarters that evening. Not Sirius, the bloke she was supposed to be looking for, but Remus.

"What the hell, Remus?!"

He stopped and turned to face her. He looked awful, like he'd been crying too. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, you can't even begin to understand how sorry I am. I don't expect you to forgive me. And I'm sorry I made you waste that, that potion. I could pay you back for it. How much do those cost?" he babbled.

"We can't talk in the hall like this. Students might overhear." She slowly drew closer, causing him to back up to the door behind him. "Let's talk in your quarters."

He gulped, and drew his wand. Tonks heard Mad-Eye shouting "Constant vigilance!" in her head, and nearly drew her own, but no, Remus just used his wand to unlock his door, ushered her in, closed the door behind him, then sheathed it again.

The sitting room of his quarters was as free of personality as a hotel room. There were no personal effects, no art on the walls. "There's only the one chair," he apologized. "You may have it of course. I'll…" He seemed about to say he'd stand, but looked so unwell, that was a promise he couldn't keep. "I'll sit on the floor," he finally concluded, and did so.

"Geminio." The copy she made of his one chair was indistinguishable from the original. She put her wand away, hauled Remus up off the floor, and shoved him into the copy. "Don't be ridiculous. Are you a wizard or not?" She sat in the original chair he'd offered her.

He shrugged, and reached into his pocket for his wallet. "How much do I owe you for that potion I made you waste?"

"Oh, I didn't let it go to waste," she said, crossing her arms and staring at him intently.

"What?"

She let the tension build for a while, then said, "I knew that even if you didn't want me, someone would. So I went to the Three Broomsticks and looked around. I didn't find one man willing to have me. I found three. That's why they call it the Three Broomsticks. It's a tradition there. We got a room. I'm very tired today, but I assure you I got my money's worth out of that potion."

His expression was like an avalanche, any trace of composure collapsing. Finally he just buried his face in his hands and choked out, "I'm glad you had a nice time."

"Yeah, I can tell you're really happy for me."

"I am!" he insisted, with a shuddering sob.

"Not jealous at all, are you?"

He shook his head, face still buried in his hands.

Tonks knew she was being cruel. While he might deserve it, that wasn't the kind of person she was, really. Sort of. "I lied," she admitted. "I didn't go to the Three Broomsticks last night."

He exhumed his face from his hands and looked at her hopefully.

How gullible was Remus, anyway? "There was no need," she said airily, "with Snape right there."

He looked completely shocked. "You, and, and, Snape? Last night?"

Don't laugh, that would spoil it. "Believe it or not, he didn't have a date already. I know he looks like a bat in those robes, but underneath he's just a man like any other."

Remus's shocked expression was changing to a completely different expression she didn't understand. "You saw Snape naked?"

"Yes. He's kind of cute, in that sallow and skinny way. And you know what they say about men with big noses." She didn't think this lie was very convincing, but Remus didn't seem to care.

Remus caught his breath. "You're telling me you saw the Dark Mark on his arm and you slept with him anyway? You didn't hold it against him? You're such a Hufflepuff that you could forgive a man even that?"

Snape was a Death Eater? She'd just, in trying to make a cruel joke, admitted to sleeping with a Death Eater? Bloody Helga.

Remus's expression didn't make any sense. Shock was there, of course, but where was the disgust? The horror? The anger? Why did he look hopeful? Cautiously happy? Puzzle pieces snapped into place.

"You knew he was a Death Eater?" she said, stalling for time. "How long have you known?"

"He joined in our seventh year, when we were students. I fought him in the First Wizarding War."

"And you didn't turn him in when the war was over?" she said accusingly.

"He switched sides," said Remus. "After he got the Dark Mark. That's what Dumbledore says, anyway. Later in the war, he was actually working for the Order, spying on the Death Eaters. Not that the Ministry would understand that. They'd lock him up in Azkaban if they knew about that tattoo, and the things he did before he switched sides. Even some of the things he had to do to keep his cover after he switched sides. But you didn't turn him in. You're an Auror, and you saw that tattoo but didn't turn him in." There was no mistaking the hope, the joy, in Remus's eyes.

Tonks suddenly grabbed Remus's left hand and yanked his sleeve up his arm. There was no tattoo there. Damn. She'd been so sure. It had made so much sense.

Remus laughed. "Good guess, but no. I don't have any tattoos. But if I did? You could accept even that? How about something even worse, in the eyes of the law?"

Never mind that. "What the hell happened to your arm?" It was a tangle of scars, of the sort that could only be left by Dark magic.

"You can forgive a man for having been a Death Eater," insisted Remus, ignoring her question. "And not turn him in to the Ministry. How about if someone is, is, someone didn't just break a law in the past and then regret it and reform, but if someone is currently breaking a law and intends to keep doing so? A law that you've sworn to uphold? What about a hypothetical situation like that?"

She let go of his arm and sleeve. "How can you of all people ask me that? You let Sirius go free, and he later betrayed the Order. You know that forgiveness can be a mistake."

She'd crushed him again. He pulled his sleeve down over his arm. "Thank you," he said eventually. "For not saying yes, just so I'd trust you and tell you so you could turn me in. Thank you for that. So this is goodbye then. Please don't contact me again. I couldn't bear it."

"Remus... Even if we never speak again, at least you should know I didn't sleep with Snape. I was just making a bad joke."

"What?"

"I had no idea he'd been a Death Eater until you told me. You're careful with your own secrets, but sloppy with other people's."

"Good Godric. I didn't mean to betray him like that, I thought you knew. I wouldn't have—"

"You're awfully gullible, Remus. Honest people often are. I've never had an opportunity to see if Snape has any tattoos, and I have absolutely no desire to. I mean, yuk. I have some standards you know."

"You kissed me. Your standards must be pretty low."

"Stop with the self-deprecating thing already. Here's all that happened. I argued with Snape for a while, demanding to know what was going on with you, and he said that unless this had something to do with the Sirius Black investigation he had no reason to talk to me. So I went home and cried. If I weren't a metamorphmagus my eyes would be as puffy as yours."

"Snape didn't tell you anything?"

"No."

"And I just blabbed his secret to you. He's a better man than I, I can tell you that much."

"He was a Death Eater!"

"I'm worse."

"There is nothing worse! Death Eaters get a life sentence in the lowest level of Azkaban! That's the worst punishment the Ministry has! It's impossible for you to be worse than that!"

Remus just shook his head at her. "Please pretend I never said anything. Snape's a good man now. He's reformed. Don't punish him for mistakes he made in his youth. Ask Dumbledore if you want any more details. Dumbledore trusts him enough to make him an Order member. The Order has to stick together. Loyalty to the Order is more important than the Ministry's laws."

"Does Dumbledore know about you?"

"Of course he does."

Tonks sat back and crossed her arms. "So I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just asked Dumbledore your secret first."

"If he felt like telling you."

"May I ask him?"

Remus shrugged. "I have no authority over you or him. You're free to ask him whatever you like."

"I think I will. Wait a minute. So Dumbledore figured out your secret."

"Yes. I don't know exactly how. He has an extensive spy network of course."

"So you and Dumbledore…" she couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.

Remus stared at her for a while before bursting into laughter. "Dumbledore?! You thought Dumbledore and I… Oh Merlin, no. I mean, not to slight him, but…"

"He never married, did he? And I've never heard of him even having a girlfriend."

"Whatever his preferences, he is not my type."

"You're sure?" Tonks turned her hair white, grew a long beard to match, made her nose longer and crooked. "Don't you find me sexy like this?"

Remus choked on his laughter.

"I mean, if this is what it takes to turn you on, I'm not proud."

Remus eventually recovered. "When I said someone figured it out, I meant independently. Dumbledore got the information through his spy network. There are several people who know. More than I'd prefer."

"And one of them is Dumbledore."

Remus nodded.

Tonks stood. "Well then. I'm off. You'll want to get out of that copied chair soon before it drops you on your arse."

"Thank you." He did so, shakily. "You might want to lose the beard. Or maybe Dumbledore will be flattered, I don't know."

"Right." She morphed back to her usual form on the way to the headmaster's tower. "Lion Bar," she said to the gargoyle, which stepped aside, clearing her path to the moving stone staircase.

Once she entered Dumbledore's office, memories of being called here for stern lectures about her pranks on Slytherins weakened her resolve slightly, but Dumbledore, thank Merlin, was all business. "Good evening, Auror Tonks. Have a seat." She sat on the chair in front of his desk, familiar from the times Professor Sprout had thrown her hands up in frustration and sent her to the headmaster's office. "How goes the hunt for Black?"

"Oh. I'm afraid I have nothing new to report. Well, reports of sightings keep trickling in from all over the country, but they all turn out to be cases of mistaken identity."

"Then what brings you to my office?"

"It's about Remus. He's hiding something."

"You suspect him of helping Black, because of their former friendship?"

"No! I didn't mean that at all. But he's hiding something else. I don't know what, but it's big. At least he thinks it is."

"Oh, that." Dumbledore sat back, relieved. His collection of ticking, whirring knickknacks filled the silence for a little while. "Let me set your mind at ease, Tonks. I assure you that I already know about that, and I am not concerned."

"But what is it?"

"I told you when you joined the Order that we share information only on a need-to-know basis."

"But…"

"I'm not opposed to him telling you, should he decide to. Feel free to ask him."

Tonks slammed her fist down on the arm of her chair in frustration. She'd forgotten to return her strength to normal after hauling Remus up off the floor, so she heard an ominous crack in the arm of the chair. "Whoops. Reparo." Good as new. "I already tried that."

Damn Dumbledore's twinkling eyes. "Then he has made his decision. I assure you that Remus's secret has no bearing on the search for Black. Care for a chocolate before you go? The effect of these Dementors stationed around the school seems to penetrate even my office."

Tonks accepted a bonbon. "Thanks."

Down the moving staircase, more fruitless patrolling of Hogwarts, and then her shift was over. She met Auror Proudfoot by the winged boar statues as he started his shift, exchanged minimal pleasantries, confirmed his identity (a jerk), let him through the wards, then turned on the spot to apparate to the Ministry. She rushed to the Auror Department, and caught Mad-Eye just as he was leaving his fortress of a cubicle. "Got a minute?" she panted.

Mad-Eye looked her over with both eyes. "For you, yes." He unlocked his cubicle, ushered her in, closed the door, and refreshed his silencing spells. They sat on the chipped wooden chairs.

"What did Remus Lupin do in the war?" Tonks asked, since she knew Mad-Eye had no patience for pleasantries.

"I don't know most of it. That's how the Order worked, information was shared only on a need-to-know basis. I knew I could count on him if we were on the same mission, but he did most of his work solo. Missed a lot of meetings. Whenever Dumbledore called for a volunteer for some crazy dangerous mission, he'd wave his hand, 'Pick me!'"

"That sounds like him. Dumbledore knew he could count on him for the Defense professorship."

"They don't all die by the end of the school year."

"But in my time at Hogwarts, I had seven Defense teachers, and none of them—"

"I know. I wonder, if I took the job, if I could figure out… But we're talking about Remus." Mad-Eye paused. "I'm man enough to admit my mistakes. You know when we arrested Sirius Black? That bastard wasn't just bragging, 'I killed James and Lily!' Shouting it over and over. That's just the quote that got to the paper. He was also bragging, 'I convinced you all that Remus was the spy!' We hushed that up, there was no need to publicly name an Order member. It was true, though. Near the end, Sirius must have been afraid he was about to be found out, because you know what that bastard did? He convinced us Remus was the traitor. We knew someone must be, our secrets were leaking out somehow, and it would have made sense for it to be Remus. The Death Eaters were actually coddling him, so he wasn't really in danger from them. The only other explanation was that Remus really was as good at dueling and tracking and surveillance and all that as he seemed to be, and frankly his skills were hard to believe. Brilliant piece of espionage by the Death Eaters, really. Sirius deflected suspicion from himself and effectively neutralized our best agent in one move. He told us that any plans Remus knew about were probably compromised, so we should change them without telling Remus."

"Did it work?" asked Tonks.

"Of course it worked. We were all so busy looking for clues that Remus was the traitor, we didn't pay enough attention to Sirius."

"No, I mean did Sirius convince the Potters to change their plans without telling Remus?"

Mad-Eye thought. "If they did, they didn't tell me. They didn't tell anyone." He took a deep breath through his mutilated nose. "Afterwards, I apologized to Remus for thinking he was the traitor. I'd bought Sirius's story, spread it around." He shook his head ruefully. "Remus took it hard of course. He'd thought Sirius was his friend. He'd thought the Order trusted him. I lost track of him after that. We all did, I suppose. Kind of awkward saying sorry to someone you believed was a traitor. Hard to renew a friendship after that." His human eye was thoughtful, while his magical eye whirled suspiciously as usual. "He seemed to want to wash his hands of us. I helped him move out of the flat he shared with Sirius. He got a muggle flatmate. Seemed to want to live as a muggle for a change. Can't blame him. We all just gave him space."

"They lived together?" Remus and her traitorous cousin?

"Not officially. I don't know if Remus even had his own place. He was always out of town doing who-knows-what for Dumbledore. But when he was in town, he lived with Sirius, yes."

"They were so close," said Tonks. "Remus and Sirius."

"Don't you go suspecting Remus too!" barked Mad-Eye. "He had enough of that in the last war. Sirius's betrayal hit him hardest of all. I'm a paranoid old coot but even I don't think Remus was a traitor."

"No! I'm not saying Remus was a traitor like Sirius, I just mean, if Remus was so good at all this Order work, how could he miss this traitor right under his nose? Wouldn't he have noticed something?"

Mad-Eye shrugged. "People have blind spots. They're too trusting. Let this be a lesson. Learn from his mistakes and don't trust anyone."

"But it just doesn't make sense that two close friends would live together, and one was a traitor while the other wasn't. I mean, the simple explanation is that they were both traitors, or—" She stood. "I need to talk to Remus."

"Isn't your shift over?"

She didn't have time to respond to that, just rushed out of the Ministry and apparated back to Hogwarts. She got her lookie-talkie out of her pocket, opened it, and spoke into the mirror. "Auror Proudfoot?"

His face appeared in the mirror shortly. "Auror Tonks? What are you doing back?"

"Let me through the wards. I'm at the winged boar statues." By a damned Dementor.

"But—"

"Quickly."

It probably didn't take all that long for him to arrive, but it was long enough for the Dementor to dredge up the memory of Charlie saying he couldn't ask her to do a long-distance relationship while he was in Romania, and her saying that she really didn't mind, and international portkeys weren't all that expensive anyway, and him saying no, she didn't understand, he just really didn't want her to suffer through a long-distance relationship when she had her choice of wizards here in Britain, any one of whom could make her happier than he could. That bastard hadn't even had the decency to dump her honestly—-

"Need some chocolate?" asked Paul. She hadn't noticed him arrive.

"Thanks." She snapped off some squares of the industrial-sized bar he was offering. "I should have cast a patronus while I waited."

"What are you doing back? You forgot something?"

"Realized something. I need to question Professor Lupin. I think he knows something about Black."

"Should I do it? What—"

"It's complicated. I need to do it myself. Let me through the wards."

He looked her up and down. "I need to confirm your identity first."

She couldn't complain about standard procedure, annoying as it was. Tonks morphed her appearance to match Paul's. "Black isn't a metamorphmagus," she told him in his own voice.

He whistled appreciatively. "You've been paying close attention to my body, I see."

"Give it a rest." She improved her look with a black eye and busted lip.

"Ouch. You're Tonks all right." He let her through the ward. She rushed to Lupin's office, morphing to her usual look on the way, tripping only twice.

She pounded on the door of Lupin's quarters. He answered eventually. He was clad in a threadbare dressing gown and slippers, and was not happy to see her. "What do you want?"

"May I come in? Please?"

"Why?"

"I'm not here to talk about you, or us, or anything like that. I just want to know, how do you know that Sirius was really guilty?"

"I think you've hit upon the one subject that's more painful to discuss than us."

"Let me in."

"No."

"This is part of the Black investigation. I have the authority to search all of Hogwarts—"

"Couldn't the Auror Department send a Dementor instead?"

"Remus!"

"Oh all right." He let her in and closed the door behind them.

Tonks got straight to business. "Was Black the Potters' secret-keeper?"

"Yes."

"How do you know that?"

"He told me."

"The traitor told you, so it must be true."

"What? No, well, I get what you mean. But James and Lily told me too. They definitely chose him."

"If they had changed their plan, would they have told you?"

Remus thought. "Well, we tried to minimize the spread of secrets. We didn't want one captured Order member to be able to spill everything, so we didn't put all our eggs in one basket. But James and Lily and I, we were friends. There were no secrets between us."

"Except for your usual one of course," said Tonks with an eye roll.

"No," said Remus seriously. "We were true friends. They knew, and they had complete faith in me anyway."

Tonks hated having to do this, but her cousin's future was at stake. "Are you sure? You trusted them with your secret, but did they trust you with theirs?"

"Damnit Tonks, of course they did! That was the one time in my life I was part of something! People believed in me! They counted on me! They trusted me!"

"Even near the end? They didn't stop talking when you entered a room, stop inviting you to things, stop including you in their plans?"

Remus thought. An expression of horror slowly formed on his face.

"Mad-Eye didn't trust you," said Tonks. "He told me. He thought you were the traitor. Sirius told him and he believed it. I think the Potters didn't trust you either. Not as an Order member, and not as friends. Sirius turned them against you."

"You're a cruel woman," Remus said. "My future is bleak enough. Must you destroy my past as well?"

"But don't you see?"

"Yes, I see. Sirius succeeded in creating strife and distrust within the Order. That must have been part of his plan. I couldn't save my friends' lives because they didn't trust me."

"But what if it wasn't part of some evil plan to betray the Order? What if Sirius just honestly didn't trust you, and wanted to save his friends by warning them about you?"

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"You knew the plan to make Sirius the secret-keeper, so they couldn't use that plan anymore. They had to change it without telling you. Sirius wasn't actually the secret-keeper! Who do you think the real secret-keeper was? It had to be someone they trusted more than you. The real secret-keeper must have been the real traitor."

Remus shook his head. His eyes were closed. He wasn't even listening. "I killed James and Lily," he said.

Tonks stared at him. "What, you?"

"It's all my fault. I should have known not to trust Sirius. I should have warned them."

"That's ridiculous. You had no way of knowing—"

"I killed James and Lily."

"That's called survivor guilt, Remus. You're not to blame."

"I killed James and Lily."

She saw that he was beyond the reach of reason, of words. There was nothing to do but hug him. He was stiff and awkward at first, then seemed to melt in her arms. She steadied him as he shook with sobs.

As warm as his body felt, she still felt a chill when she realized that no one had hugged her cousin when he'd cried the exact same thing.

—-

Lupin got rid of Tonks eventually, terrible sympathy and all. He was fine as long as he didn't think about Sirius. Tonks was brilliantly cruel to have brought him up, and as for the idea that Sirius was innocent, well, Lupin had to admire her creativity.

He was busy. He had classes to teach, essays to grade, halls to patrol after hours. Harry wandering about after curfew! James had done the same, but James hadn't had a murderer after him, at the age of thirteen, at least.

Lupin looked at the old parchment he'd confiscated from Harry. Perhaps Harry had stolen it from Filch's office himself. Perhaps it had been stolen immediately after the Marauders lost it, and passed down like a treasured heirloom from student to student for these sixteen years, facilitating countless pranks. Lupin didn't really want to know how Harry had gotten it, since then he'd feel obligated to do his professorial duty and punish whatever chain of students had conveyed it to him.

Beautiful swirls of old-fashioned calligraphy appeared on it. "Mr. Padfoot wonders what pranks Moony is planning."

Lupin nearly fell backwards out of his chair. The map still worked. It recognized him as one of its creators. This shouldn't be surprising of course, but that handwriting hit him hard.

Sirius's doodles filled the border of the parchment with a sort of Greek frieze of cartoonish dicks.

"Stop that," said Lupin.

The doodles faded. Then, "Mr. Padfoot is bored, waiting for tonight's prank. Almost all the Marauders are here. But where's Prongs?"

"Mr. Prongs reporting for duty," said James's blocky handwriting, so familiar Remus felt his heart break.

"Mr. Padfoot meant the real Prongs, you silly flower-muncher," said Sirius's calligraphy. "Everyone else is here."

"What do you mean, everyone else is here?" asked Lupin.

"See for yourself, you boring old man," said Lupin's own cramped handwriting, and then the parchment went blank.

Lupin drew his wand and tapped the parchment. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

—-

Another job gone. It was for the best, of course. It had been sheer madness for Dumbledore to hire a werewolf to work with children. Lupin had been mad to accept the job.

He accidentally caught a glimpse of himself in a dusty mirror. He hadn't shaved for a few days. He looked more like an animal than usual. He looked away. It wouldn't be right to destroy the mirrors, in case the owners of this abandoned house came back and wanted things as they had been, but he could at least cover them. That task seemed overwhelmingly huge right now. It could wait.

He sat on the musty couch. He should get a paper and look at muggle want ads. His Hogwarts salary had left him rich by his standards, but his savings wouldn't last forever.

He tasted blood, and found that he'd bitten his nail to the quick. He looked at his finger, the blood already clotting. His damn nails grew so fast, it was a constant struggle to prevent them from turning into claws like Greyback's. Some were sharp now, itching to rend flesh.

He should make himself presentable for job interviews. He should shave, but didn't feel like facing a mirror right now. Or a razor. A razor was definitely a bad idea just after losing another job. He found himself staring at his nails. One little scratch, that's all he'd allow himself. The claws of a Dark creature leave permanent scars, which wouldn't be noticed among all the rest. He pulled up his sleeve and looked for a spot that wasn't already crisscrossed with scars. He wanted the pain localized, contained in a physical wound. Not too deep, he reminded himself. Dittany's expensive. Just one little cut, no more. Remember, not too deep. But why not? There was only one way to ensure that he'd never attack a human again.

He froze when he heard someone bushwhacking along the overgrown path to the front door. It wasn't a convenient path for anyone, but this visitor seemed unusually noisy. When he heard the person tripping and falling, he knew who it was.

Should he apparate away? Would that count as resisting arrest and make things worse for him? No, such fine gradations of crimes were relevant only to human criminals. If they knew where he was hiding, why hadn't the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures sent the Werewolf Capture Unit? Why send just one Auror? Tonks was all he could hear, although it was possible she was there merely to distract him from the main force. They must have put an anti-disapparition ward up by now. There was no escape.

This was it. Lupin felt a wonderful lightness, an emptiness inside him. It was over. He could stop hiding, stop pretending to be human. The Werewolf Research Institute would even save him the trouble of killing himself. He opened the door.

Tonks slapped him, hard. "Damn you to hell, Remus!"

For a beautiful moment, nothing existed but the sting in his cheek. Then came the confusion. Tonks wore a Weird Sisters t-shirt and jeans, not her Auror uniform, and held the Daily Prophet and a small box in her hand. This didn't seem like standard Auror procedure, or Werewolf Capture Unit procedure either. "Aren't I already here?" he asked.

Tonks charged into the house. "You didn't trust me! You didn't tell me!"

"Don't take it personally. I don't trust anyone. I've never told anyone."

"Why didn't you just tell me! You could have told me yourself, a year ago, instead of me having to find out from a fucking Rita Skeeter article in the Prophet." She waved the paper as if she was going to hit him with it, but worse, she read the headline. "'Werewolf Professor Attacks Hogwarts Students.' Bitch. I'm sure it didn't happen like that of course, but one part is true, right? Dumbledore sent you on all those werewolf missions, so you finally got bitten. That bastard, taking advantage of your grief, giving you all these dangerous assignments because he knew you were trying to follow your friends into death. You needed therapy after all you'd been though, not bloody assisted suicide. I'll kill him! Screw his stupid Order of the fucking Phoenix!"

"What, no, it wasn't like that at all! I've been a werewolf since I was four. Dumbledore had nothing to do with it. He's the one who gave me some semblance of a normal life, let me attend Hogwarts, let me join the Order, introduced me to you, even gave me a professorship. Everything good in my life's come through him."

"What? But... Anyway, he gave you a job with a fucking curse on it! Now you've got no job and your secret's out and your life is ruined!"

"Still, best job I ever had. And my life was ruined already."

"You're pathetic, Remus."

"I know."

She was crying now. Why was she the one who was crying? "If you won't let me be angry at Dumbledore, and I know it's not fair to be angry at you, who am I supposed to be angry at?"

"Senior Undersecretary Umbridge?" suggested Lupin. "She made it your job to capture me for euthanasia or a slower death at the Werewolf Research Institute. Minister Fudge for signing the law? The vast majority of the wizarding populace who support this law or want something even worse? Greyback for biting me in the first place?"

"Greyback was the one who did this to you? Why on earth didn't you kill him when you had the chance?"

"What chance?"

"I saw you duel him."

"Yes. That wasn't a fight, that was a contest to establish dominance, by werewolf rules. The goal was to make one's opponent yield. It wasn't a duel to the death."

"But you could have killed him if you'd just aimed that blasting curse differently."

"But I proposed the rules of the duel, so I had to honor them. Had I killed him, I would have lost."

"You don't have to keep your word to a monster. An honorable man would have just killed him, and rid the world of a menace."

"Then I suppose I'm not an honorable man. I'm an honorable werewolf."

"I... I think I should just stop talking now." She moved closer to him. "Will you finally let me kiss you? Now that I know? Unless, oh Merlin, you're not still hiding another secret besides? That was it, right?"

Lupin laughed. "No. I mean no more secrets. And before I answer your question, can I assume that you're not going to call the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures on me?"

"Remus! Of course I'm not! How can you accuse me of—"

"Of doing your job? You had no objection to the law until you read the paper this morning."

"Yes I did! I told Dumbledore—"

"That it's terrible to treat humans as badly as werewolves, yes."

She turned a delicate shade of pink. "I owe you an apology. For the slap, first. You were right not to trust me. If you were in the habit of trusting people like me, you'd have died long before I met you."

He nodded.

"And secondly, for being a, what can I say? An idiot? An anti-werewolf bigot?"

"A perfectly normal witch of this culture," he said. "I don't see how I can blame you for that, really."

"You must hate me," she said.

"What!? No! I don't hate you. The hate has to stop somewhere, so I'm having it stop with me. If I returned all the hate directed at me, I'd be as hateful as Greyback."

"So instead you just absorb it all. That can't be healthy."

He shrugged. "I'm used to it. I'll absorb all the hate I can while I live. Bury it with me when I die. The world might have a bit less hate in it then. I can't think of a better use for my life, really."

"Remus!"

"Tonks?"

She was crying too hard to say anything else. He transfigured her newspaper into a box of tissues, and she took one and blew her nose in it. "Best use for that Rita Skeeter article," she said.

He laughed.

"And there was nothing in the paper about Sirius being innocent," she complained. "Nothing about Pettigrew still being alive. We did this huge manhunt for an innocent man and nothing for the guilty one."

Remus shrugged. "About what I expected. That's life."

"Remus, I know it's hard to believe from your vantage point, but there's more to life than just suffering and hate. There's love, too. I love you, Remus."

"No."

"What do you mean, no? I'm not saying you have to love me, and I can certainly understand why you wouldn't, I'm just saying I love you and there's nothing you can do about it."

"But you can't! You know what I am now."

"I knew who you are before I read the paper today, and that's still who you are. Oh, I almost forgot. Here. As soon as I saw that article I knew you'd need it. Dumbledore agreed with me. He told me where I could find you." She held out a gift-wrapped box to him.

He looked at it. He could smell what it was. Honeydukes chocolate, the fancy kind.

"You came here to slap me and give me chocolate?"

"Well, the slap wasn't really planned. Sorry. Don't you ever just want to slap some sense into people?"

"Slap? No, not really. My urges to rip people's throats out are disturbingly frequent, however. I don't act on them."

"Of course you don't, Mr. Perfect Self Control. The chocolate was definitely planned though."

"You know my weakness," he said, taking it with trembling hands. He could barely open the box. He wanted to open it carefully, keeping the interlocking tabs of the cardboard Honeydukes gift box perfect. It would smell of chocolate for a long time, lasting like a memory.

"And your strength," she said. She watched him fumble with the box for a while. "Oh, let me do that," she said irritably, and she ripped the box open. "What? It's just a cardboard box, Remus. I'll buy you a box of chocolates every day if you let me. Why are you crying now?"

He hadn't done a very good job transfiguring the tissues, or perhaps his transfiguration was failing, as they were starting to feel like newsprint. "You can't— We're not— You won't be doing anything for me every day. You're an Auror, sworn to uphold the law, and my whole existence is illegal. I've got to skulk around in the shadows, and I love you too much to drag you down with—"

She shut him up with a kiss. The moon was waning, the wolf was present, but the man was stronger. He reveled in the taste of her, her smell, the feel of her soft body against his as he pulled her close, her soft gasps—

She suddenly pulled her mouth back from his, turned to whisper in his ear with her warm breath. "You're pretty presumptuous, thinking I want an actual relationship. How do you know I don't just want a one-night-stand, eh? 'Cause you're damn sexy. One fun night and then I leave you alone, never bother you again. I want to give you one happy memory to try to balance all those awful memories you've got. Deal? You got a bed in this place?"

"Um. It's not a very nice bed, really—"

She grabbed a chocolate truffle out of the ripped box and stuffed it in his mouth. "Take me there." She grabbed another chocolate for herself. They were very good chocolates.

He took her there. The narrow bed had been in this abandoned house when he'd arrived, and he'd cast a lot of spells on it in an attempt to get the mildewed smell out. Maybe a human nose wouldn't notice. Now all he could smell was chocolate and her anyway.

She pushed him down on the bed as soon as she saw it and started to unbutton his shirt, hurriedly kissing a line down his chest as she went. She made no comment on his scars, just made a beeline to impatiently undo his belt, his trousers. He screamed when her small hands freed him from his pants and she took him in her warm mouth. An involuntary spasm shook him, his body once again betraying him, as he found himself thrusting into her mouth, painfully bumping against her teeth. The pain triggered another thrust, and he heard her small whimper of protest horrifyingly choked off as he exploded in the depths of her throat. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean... I didn't want to hurt you. I'm sorry. Are you all right?"

She stayed still for a moment, then took her revenge with a swirl of her tongue, an unbearably intense sensation that shook him with aftershocks. He tried pulling her off him, but she released him only grudgingly, giving the impression that she was trying to suck out his soul like a confused Dementor. Once she was settled by his side, an arm and a leg flung over him, she complained, "You still owe me a one-night-stand, since that definitely didn't count. Are you sure you're not a virgin?"

"Are you all right?" he asked frantically. "I didn't want to hurt you, that's my worst nightmare."

"It's a good thing I'm a metamorphmagus," she said. "I'm fine. Really." She stroked his chest, tracing her hand along the muscles, not the scars. "That pressure's been building up for a while. I mean, I know you don't have a girlfriend, but don't you even wank?"

He stared at her.

"Come on Remus, work with me here. We can troubleshoot this. Next time will be better. Oh no, you don't have sexual hangups too, do you? Like you think sex is dirty and shameful and whatnot, so you can't even talk about it?"

"No! I don't think so. It's just, no one's ever asked me about that before."

"First time for everything," she said breezily. "So. When did you last wank?"

"I... I mean... I haven't recently. When I tried I couldn't help thinking about, well, about you, and it didn't seem right. It seemed disrespectful. So I've been getting by with cold showers."

She curled her upper body over him and stared down at him. "That's either the sweetest or the most pathetic thing I've ever heard, I can't even tell. Sorry, I've been disrespecting you nearly every day for the last year. Hope you don't mind, just being honest here. I've got to say, though, I've been imagining you as the master of self-control, but reality didn't quite live up to the fantasy, today at least. Or did you use up all your self-control not killing me when I slapped you? That must have taken a lot."

"No! No, not at all. I just don't think it transfers well from one situation to another. I really don't have much practice at this."

"Simple solution then," she said triumphantly. "More practice." She tried to take his shirt all the way off him. He barely had the energy to sit up in bed to permit this. He felt nearly as drained as he did after a transformation.

"You don't mean now?" he asked. Next she worked on getting his trousers all the way off his limp legs. It was clear where his energy had gone.

"Not right now, no," she conceded. "But I've never even seen you naked, so I haven't been disrespecting you properly. I don't know how you've been imagining me, but whatever you've imagined, you've been right since I'm a metamorphmagus." She'd succeeded in stripping him completely. "There! Gods, you're beautiful. Would you like a massage? I've been told I give good massages." She straddled him, sent her hands under his back, let him drip through her fingers as she pulled her hands up.

He moaned in unfamiliar pleasure, then realized what was wrong. "I haven't seen you naked," he said.

She smiled. "How would you like me to look? I can do any look you want you know."

"That's not my place to say, is it? I mean, it's your body. Just do whatever looks beautiful to you."

Her smile got mischievous. "Really? All right." She pulled her shirt over her head, transforming as she did so. Suddenly, the person straddling Remus's naked body wasn't a beautiful young woman, but an ugly old man, his skin netted with scars, his hair grey.

Remus screamed in horror, not pleasure this time, and heard Tonks's laughter from that scarred, lined face. "Well you are beautiful, to me at least," she said.

Remus closed his eyes. "I don't want to see an ugly old man on top of me."

"You're beautiful, Remus. And you're thirty-four. Don't be ridiculous."

"That was a damn good prank," he admitted. "But sorry, I'm not my type."

"Ooh, I've got a good one. You can open your eyes now," she said. "I've got a different look on. Don't you want to see?"

"No," he said. "You've traumatized me. I'm never opening my eyes again. I've cast a permanent sticking charm on my eyelids."

"But if you keep your eyes closed," she complained, "how will you maintain your... constant vigilance!"

Remus pressed his hands over his closed eyes for extra security. "I absolutely do not want to see Mad-Eye Moody with his shirt off. You are a cruel, evil woman, and I suppose I deserve you as punishment for being such a lousy lay. Wait. This isn't based on firsthand experience, is it? You haven't seen Mad-Eye with his shirt off, have you? No, don't answer that, I don't really want to know."

Tonks laughed her barking laugh. "I used to think he had the world's most impressive collection of scars, but you've got him beat."

"I really didn't need to know that."

He felt her get off him for a moment, heard clothes drop to the floor, then she got back on him, draping her completely naked body on his. She felt soft and smooth and feminine. "It's safe to open your eyes," she said.

It was. Her dark eyes looked at him from her familiar heart-shaped face, topped with its usual pink spikes. Her breasts pressed against his chest. He looked at those for quite a while. He wrapped his arms around her smooth, bare back and marveled that she was here, she was real. "Tonks," he said, saying her ridiculous name, stroking her ridiculous hair. "Tonks."

"Got any energy back?" she asked hopefully.

"Um. I don't think so, sorry."

"Too bad. It's your turn," she said. She slithered up his body until she straddle his face. He looked up at this amazing view. He admired the attention to detail that made all her hair pink.

"Um," he said apologetically. "I really don't know what to do here."

She told him. He was a quick study. She gave him feedback in the form of helpful suggestions, giggles, smiles, gasps, moans, shudders, and eventually screams.

He suddenly realized, in great shock, that the thing his instincts were telling him to do right now was, in fact, the right thing to do. He wriggled out from under her, pinned her to the bed, and thrust inside her, slowly at first, relishing every sensation, then pounding hard.

Her gasps were the sweetest sound he'd ever heard. He wanted to remember everything about this, the soft resilience of her body, the smell of her, everything. "Please come," she begged after a while. "I can't come any more."

But she was wrong. As he exploded once more inside her and collapsed on top of her, he felt her spasm around him.

After lying there for a while, it suddenly occurred to him. "I'm not crushing you, am I? Sorry, I'll get up."

She wrapped her arms and legs around him tightly. "You are and I like it. Don't go."

He looked in her beautiful dark eyes. "So. Was that a satisfactory one-night-stand?"

"No," she said.

He froze. It had seemed pretty good to him by the end there. How high were her standards?

"We'll try again tomorrow," she said as she hugged him even tighter. "We'll get it right eventually."


End file.
